Researchers say English language arts teachers can employ various strategies to help more advanced English and multilingual learners express more complex ideas, according to an article in K-12 Dive.
Multilingual learners are gaining literacy skills while learning language, which teachers don’t always take into account, says Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, coordinator and professor of bilingual education at Brooklyn College in New York City. “You can teach language, but unless you teach it within a context, it’s meaningless.”
The emphasis on standardized testing for high schoolers during the No Child Left Behind era resulted in more proscribed writing assignments and less exploration of multiple genres of writing, which “is critical, especially for those adding English to their linguistic repertoire,” says Cati de los Ríos, associate professor of language, literacy and culture at the University of California-Berkeley School of Education.
Ascenzi-Moreno sees several “gateways” for advanced multilingual learners. The first centers around using oral language.
“People need to talk about their ideas,” she says. “If you don’t have an idea, you can’t write. Students need to talk a lot about what they want to write, and who they want to write about.”
This relates to the concept of “translanguaging” — students using their full language knowledge base rather than separate language systems when orally thinking through ideas.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re speaking in French, or Chinese, or Spanish, if you’re speaking about an idea. Trans-language is another gateway to writing more complexly,” Ascenzi-Moreno says. “Sometimes, teachers expect students to do all the work in English, but suppressing language can suppress ideas.”
Advanced multilingual learners also need a community to talk about their writing and a wider audience for it, Ascenzi-Moreno says. “To have a voice and a perspective, they have to have an audience beyond the teacher.”
De los Ríos recommends translanguaging especially for high school-aged students who have become experts in the humor, rhetorical devices and idioms of their home language. “Children can do those things, but not necessarily in English,” she says. “You can have students read or listen to something in their home language and then discuss it and write about it in their target language.”
This can connect to other scaffolds like word banks and sentence starters that help students open paragraphs and make transitions between different ideas, as well as checklists at the bottom of assignments that are especially helpful for younger students, de los Ríos says.
Checklists can include questions such as, “Did I use correct punctuation [and] capital letters? Do the sentences have details?” she says. This “can help to carry the cognitive load of writing, which can [otherwise] feel daunting.”
Culturally responsive prompts and authentic writing tasks such as asking students to write a letter to their city council member or a review of an album or movie helps engage them and build more complex writing skills, de los Ríos says. She encourages teachers to take “ample time” to rehearse writing orally and engage students in Socratic discussions and debates.
Also, less experienced students can be paired with more proficient learners so “they can deepen fluency and expand the usage of English words,” she says.
Focusing only or mostly on vocabulary or language structure is less effective to help multilingual learners express more complex ideas, Ascenzi-Moreno says.
“There needs to be a balance between direct instruction, vocabulary, structure, genre — and then, conferencing about voice and purpose,” she says.
De los Ríos recommends against rote memorization, English-only approaches and putting grammar before substance.
“Center on ideas first — a student’s excitement about a topic,” she says. “Develop ideas, evidence and reasoning before focusing on grammar and mechanics, which can come in toward the end, through the revision stage.”
Writing should center students’ identities, be aimed at authentic tasks and be celebrated, de los Ríos says. “Students should feel like writing isn’t just for school. It’s not something that just lives in the ELA space.”
K-12 Dive
