Keystone Concepts in Teaching: A Higher Education Podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning

S1 E7: Strategies for Teaching Multilingual Students

• Stearns Center • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Shelby Broberg and Dr. Idée Edalatishams join your host, Dr. Rachel Yoho, for a conversation on how we can support multilingual learners, including assignment design, assessment, and more! We explore actionable strategies for education that support all students, both multilingual and not, across disciplines. 

Resources: George Mason University Writing Center: https://writingcenter.gmu.edu, A few example links about Dr. Bobbi Olson’s work (who was mentioned by Dr. Idée Edalatishams in the episode): Olson, B. (2013). Rethinking our work with multilingual writers: The ethics and responsibility of language teaching in the writing center. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/8a663ff7-4f66-40be-8002-65e333778f72, https://www.grandview.edu/about/directory/profile?id=0011vln, Example links on translingualism (mentioned by Dr. Idée Edalatishams in the episode): Horner, B., Lu, M. Z., Royster, J. J., & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3), 303-321.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/25790477, Horner, B., & Tetreault, E. (Eds.). (2017). Crossing divides: Exploring translingual writing pedagogies and programs. University Press of Colorado., https://louisville.edu/faculty/bmhorn01, Canagarajah, A. S. (Ed.). (2013). Literacy as translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms. Routledge., Canagarajah, S. (2016). Translingual writing and teacher development in composition. College English, 78(3), 265-273. 

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Rachel:

Hello and welcome. My name is Rachel Yoho, and I'm your host for Keystone Concepts in Teaching, a higher education podcast from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, where we share impactful and evidence based teaching practices to support all students and faculty. In this episode, we're going to be talking about teaching multilingual students and multilingual students as learners in our spaces. I'm excited to be joined by two guests. Our first guest in this episode is Shelby Broberg. Shelby is the Communication Center Director and an instructor here at George Mason University. We're also joined today by Dr. Idée Edalatishams. She is the Faculty ESL Specialist at George Mason's Writing Center where she trains and mentors consultants to work effectively with multilingual learners. And so, thank you so much, both of you, for joining us. As we get started for today, can you tell us a little bit about the grant that you recently had through the Stearns Center called Revision and Assessment of Training Modules for Working with Multilingual Students? Maybe a little bit about the work and the impacts that you hope it will have?

Shelby:

Yeah, so thank you, Rachel, for the introductions. Our grant through the Stearns Center was actually intended to be a follow up to an initial grant that I received with a team of researchers from James Madison, Virginia Tech, and George Mason. Back in 2022, we applied for a grant through the 4VA, or the 4Virginia project that awards grants for collaborations between Virginia universities, and our project then was to create training modules for communication centers across the country based on needs from both their administrative team and from the consultant perspective. So we first researched what these communication centers were missing, what training did they feel like they needed, but didn't have access to. And the number 1 request across the country was training for working with multilingual learners. So it was a huge demand and so we took our modules that we created online. They're an Open Access Resource for people to use, whether they're in a communication center as a consultant or as an administrator. And one of those modules was the most demanded module, the one for multilingual learners and how to work with them in a consultation. And so this grant from the Stearns Center actually had us working on gathering feedback from the people who are actually using that module to train and seeing how effective it was.

Idée:

And also, thanks for having me on this podcast, Rachel. I would just add that, like Shelby mentioned, Comm Center training was not previously focused a lot on working with Multilingual students. So, we also tried to address this need at Mason, which has a very diverse student body and try to focus in on being intentionally inclusive in our training of consultants here in the lab for writing and communication and impact the consultants who are non multilingual students and also those who are multilingual students themselves to provide them with research based techniques on helping multilingual students who want to improve their oral communication skills here.

Rachel:

That's great. Thank you both so much for sharing this. We've been so excited in the Stearns Center, not only to see this work develop, but to support this through the grant program as well. And so let's talk a little bit about the really practical aspects of supporting all students here like Idée was just mentioning. And in particular, obviously, what we're here to talk about is supporting our multilingual students as we're doing things like teaching and grading and giving feedback. For my first question with this, just broadly, can you tell us a little bit about what should instructors be considering or doing or maybe perhaps not doing in this type of situation?

Shelby:

That's a good question. I think for us, the main consideration that we want people to take away from this aside from the practical skills, is really just considering cultural differences when they're interacting with students and when students come to them with concerns about things like their accentedness. One thing that we have a lot of in the communication center, and Idée can attest to this as well, is students coming in wanting to get rid of their accent and eliminate it. And we want to encourage instructors and really anyone who interacts with students to really take the frame of mind that it's not at all about eliminating accents in speakers, it's mostly about improving understanding and helping them reach their communication goals rather than changing the way that they speak. And we should really be sort of changing our frame of mind, especially as instructors, to think about what an advantage it is to have multilingual speakers in our classroom because it makes us all better listeners, and I think especially in our increasingly diverse world, you know, we're sending out students into the workforce where they are going to be working with linguistically diverse populations, so the more often we can expose them to different sounded speech, the more well prepared they're going to be.

Idée:

I would just add that in the field of applied linguistics, that's referred to as translingualism, and I'd like to draw on works on translingualism a little bit, including Bobby Olson's work in the context of writing centers, and also drawing on works of scholars that have most recently talked about translingualism, like Horner and Kanagaraja. Adopting a translingual approach means that we see differences in language, not as a barrier, but as a resource for meaning making. I would encourage instructors to rethink the habit of equating differences in language use with errors. We also need to re examine what we think about being multilingual. Multilingual students, especially at Mason, come from very different backgrounds. They're not necessarily like second language speakers of English. Some of them have grown up with multiple languages at home. Some of them have recently moved to the US and have recently started using English. Some of them have been using English for a long time, but they've just not got official or academic training on writing and speaking. So considering all these differences and the different backgrounds they come from, we should celebrate the linguistic backgrounds of these writers and create the space for them to draw from the entire linguistic repertoire that they have available based on the variety of languages they speak. And I would add to the concept of accentedness that Shelby brought up that, again, in applied linguistics, the field of pronunciation research, there is a lot of research on accentedness and the differences it has with concepts like intelligibility, which is how much a listener can understand a speaker, and comprehensibility, which is how much effort a listener needs to put into understanding a speaker. It is possible that accentedness is perceived as really high, like somebody is perceived to have a very"foreign accent," quote unquote, but still they're a hundred percent intelligible to the listeners. So having an accent does not in any way equal how much understandable that person is.

Rachel:

And that's an excellent point, I think, that can also bring us a little bit to, it's not just our students who might be multilingual, our instructors as well. I mean, unfortunately, sometimes instructors might be getting very negative reviews or feedback on just the same thing we're talking about there with their accents or something like that. So really here, we might be looking at creating an entire community around multilingualism or translingualism as you were mentioning, Idée. So I appreciate that. But let's talk a little bit more about what are some of the strategies or tips or recommendations that you can share? So what would you like our listeners to be thinking about or actions they might take?

Idée:

So one thing I'd like instructors to have in mind as they develop assignments for oral communication or even written communication for their students is the differences between how understandable students are and how we think about standard American English. If somebody is understandable 100%, it shouldn't matter that they have an accent, either in their speaking or in their writing. And research in pronunciation, focusing now on oral communication, like, when students are giving a presentation, research has shown that certain features of speech or pronunciation has more impact on intelligibility. And those are more what we call prosodic or supra segmental features of pronunciation. Things like intonation, word stress, sentence stress, tone and rhythm and even volume. Those are things that are not considered segmental features, which is like vowels and consonants. So, supra segmental features have a lot more impact on, understandability. So, one thing that I'd like instructors to have in mind is, try to identify some of these factors that may impact students' understandability in their assessment of students or in designing their assignments, and see how they can support students in improving in those areas if it interferes with their understandability. And they can refer students to resources in those areas like intonation, sentence stress and prominence and things like that.

Shelby:

I think the piece of advice or recommendation that I would give is if you don't feel comfortable as a linguistic expert, you know, giving, providing linguistic advice, I know for a lot of people that falls outside of their realm of expertise, the best thing that we can do as educators is to work on building our students confidence in their oral communication because we know that regardless of whether you're a multilingual student or speaker or not, the more confident you are, the better of a speaker you become. And that's true for multilingual students as well.

Rachel:

I think these are great points, because here it sounds like what we're really looking at are key aspects. And so let's maybe move a little bit over into some more logistics. So how might we provide instructions for like activities or writing assignments or oral presentations? What do we want to say or do when we're setting these up with our students?

Idée:

So, working with international students or multilingual students in general, we see a lot of feedback that comes from instructors that are not specific or like what we call constructive feedback in writing center pedagogy. And, that kind of feedback is usually not only confusing to the students, but also frustrating and like, hurting their confidence, and we don't want to do that because when we write on a student's paper that their English is not good or they should fix some grammatical concepts or, take this to an editor or to the writing center and general feedback like that, it only impacts students' confidence and makes them think they're like terrible communicators, which they are not. So I would really encourage instructors to familiarize themselves with the specific aspects of writing that they can provide feedback on. They should definitely prioritize things like content and organization and arguments and the way the flow of the arguments may or may not make sense in the students' writings. And focus on those aspects and when they provide written feedback on a student's paper, be very specific about what aspects of a sentence may not be making sense or what about the paragraph needs work rather than saying like,"Take this to the writing center" or"Improve your English." And that kind of reflects on people's biases or preconceived notions about having multilingual students and having their language being kind of like"broken," quote unquote. So it's really important to provide specific feedback and I encourage instructors to, be aware and mindful of the impact their comments on students' papers have on them. In terms of speaking, the same thing basically thinking about accents or features of accent that do not necessarily impact students' intelligibility. I encourage instructors to think about what parts of students' speech and what aspects of their pronunciation impacts intelligibility. For example, if a student is putting more stress on a word in a sentence that is not really important, it might signal, the message incorrectly and differently from what the speaker actually intends. So those aspects of student speaking can be things that the instructor help them identify and help them practice outside the class. They can refer to a lot of resources that are out there on YouTube. There are a lot of videos on things like pausing, sentence stress, or thought grouping.

Rachel:

That's great. Thank you so much. I think here we're really looking at the key aspects of providing feedback and feedback that's actionable. And so as we continue this, are there other things that you'd like to share with us about assessment or like writing or presentations in the particular context of multilingual learners?

Shelby:

Yeah, I think when we're assessing public speaking, especially any type of oral communication, you know, the criteria that we use to assess public speaking comes from very Western standards that we assume to be proper English, and Idée kind of mentioned this in the written form as well, but we have these standards of what is an appropriate rate of speech, how many verbal fillers are too many before it starts to be distracting, how much variety should you have in your tone of voice? And those standards, again, really are pretty inconsiderate of our multilingual speakers because we have speakers coming from languages that naturally have a faster or slower rate of speech, or coming from native languages where maybe there isn't as much variety in tone. And so when they do things like speak in English in an oral presentation, and we use standards that were developed to assess native English speakers, it presents a pretty unfair standard. So when we're assessing oral communication, we should be instead focusing on that overall message and how understandable it is and then giving constructive detailed feedback on how to improve those vocal elements that could be perhaps affecting the overall understandability.

Idée:

And I would just add that instructors should take all of these things into consideration when developing their rubrics and again, be very specific in their rubrics of what they mean when they say like delivery or things like quality of writing, these are very general terms that are very broad and can be interpreted differently. So if they're thinking about like sentence level issues, they should call it something like that or grammatical concepts, and use words that clearly transfer the message about what kind of assessment is going to be done and what areas of either writing or speaking is going to be assessed in each category of their rubrics. I would just encourage them to think about the specificity of the terminology they use in their rubrics as well.

Shelby:

The last thing to add I would say is when you're acknowledging that a student is doing something well in an oral presentation, instead of just writing great volume or good variety and tone, explaining why it is good is always helpful because sometimes students are not, all of us are not aware of the things that we do well, and sometimes we don't do them well on purpose. And so when we can identify for students, you know, your variety in tone makes you sound really excited about this topic. When we are able to identify the effects of the good things that they're doing or the reasons why they're good, it reinforces to them and it's a much more memorable piece of feedback than if we just write great volume. So, I think, like Idée said, the more specific we can be, the better.

Idée:

Defintely.

Rachel:

So when we're looking at this, we're looking at specific and actionable and positive. They're really emphasizing not only areas for improvement, but also maybe we're sandwiching with what's being done well and why or the impacts for those things. That's great. So as we wrap up our conversation here, can you just briefly wrap up your thoughts on how this conversation that we've been having represents a keystone concept in teaching?

Shelby:

I think, for us, this is, to me, especially, this is, like, exactly what it means to engage in inclusive pedagogy, where we are considering that all of the students who are in our classrooms they don't come from the same experience, they don't have the same background, and so in order for us to provide an equitable experience to those students, we have to be making efforts to acknowledge that some students are going to need different resources and some students' feedback is going to be different, right? When we're working with multilingual students, it's not, you know, grading easy on them to consider the overall understandability of their message rather than their tone and their rate, but it is providing an equitable experience because they are coming to that classroom from a diverse place. And, you know, as we know, multilingualism is a huge strength. It is an excellent skill to have; it creates so many more opportunities for students, and it should not be something that they bring into the classroom and then feel like they are punished for It should be something that we are providing them enough resources to where they feel like they have just as good of a chance to be successful as every other student in that classroom.

Idée:

And, of course, obviously we're here to support these students and every student at Mason. So, to all the instructors who are listening to us, if your students need support in their speaking or writing, please send them to the Lab for Writing and Communication. Our writing center consultants and communication center consultants are trained to work with multilingual students in particular, and we're happy to support them in, developing their skills all the more.

Rachel:

That's wonderful. Thank you for that shout out there as well. We'll include some of the resources that were mentioned in the show notes so that our listeners will have that as well. But thank you so much to our guests from this episode, Shelby Broberg and Dr. Idée Edalatishams. And as we wrap up, I just want to thank you again so much for your time and sharing these strategies because I think these were great. So actionable for our listeners here. And we look forward to sharing our next episode with you on Keystone Concepts in Teaching with episodes every two weeks. So thank you so much.

Shelby:

Thank you.

Idée:

Thanks for having us.