Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

There are numerous perceived barriers to the use of plurilingual pedagogies in U.S. writing classrooms. Most derive from the country’s largely monolingual population that harbors inaccurate assumptions about multilingualism and language education (e.g., only the target language (English) should be used, and, if other languages are allowed, the teacher should be fluent in those languages). These assumptions exist even among secondary and tertiary writing instructors and school administrators; therefore, plurilingual practices are regularly deemed inappropriate or impossible to implement (Horner & Trimbur). However, teaching from a plurilingual perspective is crucial not only for increased intercultural understanding and normalizing of multilingualism, but also because such instruction supports the learning of additional languages (Stille & Cummins, 2013) and gives multilinguals the opportunity to fully engage in all aspects of the writing process (Fu, 2009 & 2019). Based on findings of an analysis of over 50 quantitative and qualitative studies of effective pedagogy in multilingual writing classrooms, this paper offers five key practices that allow students the benefits of using their plurilingual repertoire when learning to write, even if their instructors do not share their language(s): 1) Use of all languages during brainstorming/pre-writing activities, 2) Use of all language(s) when creating early drafts, 3) Use of shared other language(s) among peers when reviewing drafts written in the target language, 4) Use of other language(s) to support formal and informal vocabulary development, and 5) Use of all languages in journal writing. This paper describes the practices, their pedagogical benefits, and addresses implementation across contexts.