Hi 

I'd just like to share a few thoughts and a couple of multilingual activities I have used recently.  I have a background in ESOL, including ESOL teacher education, but I am currently working as an academic support lecturer with Foundation art students in an art college - on strategies for study. So some of the students I work with are monolingual English, and some are multilingual. Some of the multilingual students are in the process of extending their English; some need to pass an exam to get IELTS equivalent of 6 (for BA entry).  

Although I don't teach the English classes, development of language and literacy practices is an element of all my work with students. We work on spoken & written reflection, research strategies, writing, reading, time management etc.  And... the challenge of getting thoughts into words; this is a big issue for many students and connects to something that Mel, Becky and Dermot say (in the section on brainstorming): "their thinking will be free from language restrictions".  Recently I have used the following multilingual activities in group sessions on 'Written and spoken reflection'.  All group sessions are a mix of monolingual and multilingual students.

Session aims: strengthen conceptualisations about reflection; reflect in depth in talk and writing. 

1. The session starts with activities designed to explore the purposes of reflection and how it differs from description. And students do some reflection on aspects of their art & design practice (so I get a diagnostic picture). 

2. I ask for a volunteer, willing to tell the group some of their reflective thoughts about an aspect of their current art/design project, and to respond to my probing questions. My questions aim to push the student to tell us more, in words, about the depth of their thinking (they have already explored a lot of this thinking in their visual work). 

3. I ask the other students to talk in pairs about what they noticed about the conversation between me and the student - and to do this in any language(s). While they are doing this, the volunteer and I go off into a corner of the room and I ask them what they noticed about the impact of my questions.  

4. I ask the pairs and the volunteer to feedback to the group. The feedback always includes (but is not limited to) how the volunteer used my probing questions to push their thinking deeper. 

5. I ask students to get into threes and replicate the same activity: one person reflects; one is the probing questioner; one is an observer (then they switch roles). I suggest to students that they do this in any language(s) they wish, and we sort the groups out accordingly. 

During this activity I monitor the depth of reflection and support students to push it further. When a group is using a language other than English, I can see whether the student in the 'probing questioner' role is asking many questions (although I can't understand what they are saying) - and if they aren't asking many questions, I encourage them to ask more - and, I ask the group to tell me in English, a few things that they have been talking about, so I can monitor and support the depth of their reflection. 

6. I ask the whole group for feedback about the experience. 

7. Further activities in which students do some reflection (in English).

I appreciate that there are some concerns about using multilingual approaches. Our common ground is that we're all trying to facilitate learning.  I'm not making any research claims (of course!) but tentatively, in relation to students who often find it challenging to express their ideas in English...I think I have noticed that something seems to shift after a student has used one of their expert languages in the activities I have mentioned above. I've heard students talking more clearly, in more depth, and more freely in English.  This is why I am interested in multilingual approaches - for me they are about  facilitating and easing the learning process, inclusion, identity, claiming and using your voice... and more....  

 I can't see a place for a monolingual institution with monolingual practices in a multilingual world. I have been talking to colleagues about the idea of offering some academic support tutorials for students in languages other than English. So far, responses  have focussed on logistics that could make this difficult to implement. However I work in an art college which says the following in its statement of institutional values: "we ask original questions and arrive at new insights through the creativity and rigour of our practice and our research". So I am looking forward to some interesting conversations.

Pauline






-----Original Message-----
From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Shaun Gurmin
Sent: 04 February 2017 16:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: TLang ESOL-Research e-seminar discussant response

Hello everyone,

James, I want to respond to the ideas you have shared with regards to the development of a multilingual pedagogy.

"Brainstorming and planning a piece of writing using students’ strongest language or a mixture of languages. Although the final piece of writing will be in English, their thinking will be free from language restrictions; it will be interesting to see how this affects the planning process."

I think this could be useful for beginner or pre-intermediate level students. But if you use this with intermediate or higher level students you could potentially hold their progress back. A crucial step towards fluency is dropping the habit of translation, translation costs a lot of time and prevents natural communication. This means hearing a mental Spanish voice when reading Spanish, planning a text and writing in Spanish, stopping the habit of mentally translating spoken Spanish into English etc. My fluency jumped a great deal once I overcame this hurdle in Spanish and Portuguese, and it takes a lot of practise.

In essence then, an activity like this when applied to intermediate and higher level learners is likely holding students back from overcoming this translation stage. In fact, it is quite possibly teaching / conditioning them into doing the opposite of what they should be doing by developing translation habits i.e. planning in their native language, translating and then expressing oneself in the foreign language. Of course, one could argue translation is a good habit, which it is, but this again comes down to the students´ preferences, but the majority of students I have encountered don´t want to be translators, they want to be fluent in English.

"Grouping students with people (e.g. another teacher, classroom assistant or a higher level classmate) with whom they can communicate in their expert language(s) for discussion on the topic of the day. One person acts as scribe and notes down key words and ideas that emerge. These notes then form the basis of further language work. Each person on the group tries to summarise the discussion in English, using the notes as prompts or they construct sentences in English from the key words produced."

My concern with this is: are you running the risk of segregation? The Spanish students speak with the Spanish, the Chinese with their own speakers etc. Maybe if this were run as a one time activity it could be okay, but imagine if this were one of the first activities of a course, you would have strong bonds made between those who share their own language(s) but a division between those who speak different languages. It is curious how this goal of embracing diversity is, judging by this task, creating division.

"‘Multi-lingual card cluster’: each student is given three pieces of card and told to write or draw three things, facts of opinions, relating to the topic. They use any language, or mix of languages, they like. When each student has their three cards, the teacher invites one student to read out something they have on their card (in English). For example if the topic is Brexit, someone might write “52% votaron leave en el referendum”, which he/she translates for the group. If someone has a similar idea, they read it out and add their card to the first one. This proceeds until all the cards are clustered together in categories. The cards can then be used as prompts for further speaking practice or they can be the basis of writing."

The issue I have with this final point is the same I have with the first, you are reinforcing the behaviour of translation. As I said, this can be helpful for beginners, but conditioning intermediate and advanced students to first plan what to think or say in their own language before translating the message into English is not a good habit to be encouraging, unless they explicitly want to do so, perhaps for professional reasons.

If this is the product of the initial stages, I do await with trepidation your developed multilingual ESOL pedagogy. I hope I am wrong in foreseeing the multi-lingual ESOL classroom harboring mono-cultural ghettos of translators. 

Best regards,

Shaun.

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***********************************
ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds.
To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html
To contact the list owner, send an email to
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