English language arts teachers can employ a variety of strategies to help more advanced English and multilingual learners express more complex ideas, researchers say.
Multilingual learners are gaining literacy skills while learning language, which teachers don’t always take into account, said 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 greater emphasis on standardized testing for high schoolers during the No Child Left Behind era prompted more proscribed writing assignments and less exploration of multiple genres of writing, which “is critical, especially for those adding English to their linguistic repertoire,” said Cati de los Ríos, associate professor of language, literacy and culture at the University of California-Berkeley School of Education.
Ascenzi-Moreno, who is also elementary section steering committee chair for the National Council of Teachers of English, sees several “gateways” for advanced multilingual learners, the first of which centers around using oral language.
“People need to talk about their ideas,” she said. “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.”
Related to that is the concept of “translanguaging,” which means that while orally thinking through ideas, students can use their full language knowledge base rather than separate language systems.
“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 said. “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 said. “To have a voice and a perspective, they have to have an audience beyond the teacher.”
De los Ríos also recommends translanguaging, particularly 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 said. “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.”
That can be connected 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 said.
Those checklists can include questions such as, “Did I use correct punctuation [and] capital letters? Do the sentences have details?” she said. That “can help to carry the cognitive load of writing, which can [otherwise] feel daunting.”
Culturally responsive prompts and authentic writing tasks like asking students to write a letter to their city council member or a review of an album or movie help to engage them and build more complex writing skills, de los Ríos said. She also encourages teachers to take “ample time” to rehearse writing orally and engage students in Socratic discussions and debates.
Lastly, consider pairing less experienced students with more proficient learners so “they can deepen fluency and expand the usage of English words,” she added.
Approaches that focus only or mostly on vocabulary or language structure are less effective in helping multilingual learners to express more complex ideas, Ascenzi-Moreno said.
“Those things are important,” she said. “There needs to be a balance between direct instruction, vocabulary, structure, genre — and then, conferencing about voice and purpose.”
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 said. “Prioritize development of ideas, evidence and reasoning before focusing on grammar and mechanics, which can come in toward the end, through the revision stage.”
Ultimately, writing should center students’ identities, be aimed at authentic tasks and be celebrated, de los Ríos said.
“Students should feel like writing isn’t just for school,” she said. “It’s not something that just lives in the ELA space.”
