Tip: Supporting Multilingual Students
Are we are providing equitable opportunities to be successful in - not just equitable access to - course learning activities?
First- and second-generation students (students born outside the U.S., or born inside the U.S. to immigrant parents) and international students make up one-quarter to one-third of students currently enrolled in higher education in the U.S. Looking at the K-12 population, in 2019, more than 1 in 5 children in the U.S. was living in a multilingual home. More and more learners each year come to higher education from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Many college students who speak English as a second or additional language have strong academic backgrounds in their native languages, but they may still need English language support to be successful in American higher education.
Students who need English language support sometimes have institutional resources - like a writing center and peer tutors, and even English prerequisite coursework - to help them to be successful. Sometimes, however, students are admitted to programs where they struggle with the high expectations of written and oral communication. How can we best support student learning while helping students develop communication skills?
One strategy that some instructors use is to provide extensive supplemental materials - lecture notes and slides, recordings of talk-throughs on problem sets, recordings of lectures, vocabulary lists, video and text versions of course readings - either in advance of or after a class session. While the aim of providing course materials and learning activities in a variety of modalities is good, the execution can be challenging. Providing this level of support is frequently a lot of work for the instructor, particularly if you need to create or find everything for the first time. While I would never dissuade someone from providing more resources, there are a few less time-intensive strategies that can also benefit students.
- Clear language & clear expectations -
Strategies focused on clear communication benefit all students. One of the easiest and most impactful is remembering to allow wait time in between posing a question and asking for students to respond. It’s also helpful to spend a few minutes explicitly addressing with students how to ask questions and interpret assignment instructions. As we engage with students in the classroom, it’s helpful to have prepared multiple examples to illustrate challenging concepts, including visual supports, so that students can hear explanations in a variety of ways. Thinking about how we use special vocabulary - either disciplinary or idiomatic -that can be difficult to understand is also important to supporting students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
- Strengths-based approach -
Often our learning activities are designed for the average student, rather than the exceptional students. Activities that activate students’ prior knowledge help get all students ready for the assignment and demonstrate to students that we value the knowledge they bring to the class. When we build ways for students to use each other as resources (as with jigsaw activities) and incorporate more project-based activities, we are allowing students to use their strengths and learn from their classmates.
- Student-led assessment -
Inviting students to come up with their own questions, curate a portfolio of their learning, and provide input on the types of feedback they find most helpful can all bring students into the assessment process. I also find using minute papers at the end of class helpful in getting students thinking about - and communicating about - their learning process. Even small changes here can communicate to students that we value what they bring to their own learning process.
What questions do you have about supporting multilingual learners?
As always, I am cognizant of balancing what will help meet student needs with what is possible for us to provide. Faculty need to be able to set boundaries on what is possible to do in any given semester, knowing that our time and energy are both finite resources. I think it’s important to keep in mind that we are ultimately talking about an equity issue. We want to provide multilingual learners with equitable access to learning activities, but we also need to reflect on whether we are providing them with equitable opportunities to be successful in those activities.