Making Classrooms More Inclusive for Multilingual Learners

Taking an asset-based approach to supporting students who are new to the English language can help them thrive.

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© 2021 George Lucas Educational Foundation

[francisgoin]

About Tip #1 [some thoughts of mine from experience teaching ESL in China]...
- students who are called upon to use L1 (native language) in a classroom that functions primarily / exclusively in L2 (a foreign / next language for the student) can feel "called out." This direct attention may push the student to shy away from either L1 or L2 intentional usage despite the teacher's desire to be inclusive. This sort of partnership between L1 and L2+ may better serve students if students speak to one another in L1 to help explain L2+ content (as suggested in the video) rather than be used in isolation - what is "pineapple" in Spanish?
- L1 to L2+ rarely has a [nearly] one:one translation. There are nuances of an idea - the feeling of love, for example - that other languages can express wherein English cannot. The student may use L1 to express him/herself, but a translation [from that student] for the rest of the classroom requires sufficient L2 proficiency. This may be another deterrent for a student who is asked to partner L1 and L2+ in the social setting.

About Tip #4 and varied reading material...
- reading is a receptive skill across languages that have a written form, so the practice of reading itself is good. Enticing students into reading by creating or allowing a dependency on available L1 material does not have a direct correlation to growth in reading in L2+, so unless the entirety of the child's education is multilingual, or the entirety or majority of the child's after-education life requires or exalts multilingualism, it may be more of a disservice to the L2 learner to continue relying on available L1 content.

I like the issue this video addresses with its tips; multilingual classrooms are growing - America continues to have a bleeding heart for foreigners. It is important that educators know how to, and are able to, reach students of varying language proficiencies - bridging L1 and L2+.

Something to keep in mind is that a disparity in language proficiencies does not represent an absence of understanding in content. Single-digit addition or subtraction in mathematics is the same exercise across languages; only terminology for functions or numbers may differ between the languages, so a student may be able to complete a worksheet without problems but have trouble listening to or speaking about the process. Increasing L1 usage in the classroom may aid in a student expressing him/herself regarding academic content, and it might help content acquisition, but we should keep in mind that the presence of L1 inclusiveness is not a cure-all for the learning in a classroom.