October 30, 2024 • 19 mins
Shelby Broberg and Dr. Idée Edalatishams join your host, Dr. Rachel Yoho, for a conversation on how we can support multilingual learners, including assignment design, assessment, and more! We explore actionable strategies for education that support all students, both multilingual and not, across disciplines.
Resources: George Mason University Writing Center: https://writingcenter.gmu.edu, A few example links about Dr. Bobbi Olson’s work (who was mentioned by Dr. Idée Edalatishams in the episode): Olson, B. (2013). Rethinking our work with multilingual writers: The ethics and responsibility of language teaching in the writing center. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/8a663ff7-4f66-40be-8002-65e333778f72, https://www.grandview.edu/about/directory/profile?id=0011vln, Example links on translingualism (mentioned by Dr. Idée Edalatishams in the episode): Horner, B., Lu, M. Z., Royster, J. J., & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3), 303-321. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25790477, Horner, B., & Tetreault, E. (Eds.). (2017). Crossing divides: Exploring translingual writing pedagogies and programs. University Press of Colorado., https://louisville.edu/faculty/bmhorn01, Canagarajah, A. S. (Ed.). (2013). Literacy as translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms. Routledge., Canagarajah, S. (2016). Translingual writing and teacher development in composition. College English, 78(3), 265-273.
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Episode Transcript
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Rachel (00:08):
Hello and welcome.
My name is Rachel Yoho, and I'myour host for Keystone Concepts
in Teaching, a higher educationpodcast from the Stearns Center
for Teaching and Learning, wherewe share impactful and evidence
based teaching practices tosupport all students and
faculty.
In this episode, we're going tobe talking about teaching
multilingual students andmultilingual students as
(00:29):
learners in our spaces.
I'm excited to be joined by twoguests.
Our first guest in this episodeis Shelby Broberg.
Shelby is the CommunicationCenter Director and an
instructor here at George MasonUniversity.
We're also joined today by Dr.
Idée Edalatishams.
She is the Faculty ESLSpecialist at George Mason's
(00:51):
Writing Center where she trainsand mentors consultants to work
effectively with multilinguallearners.
And so, thank you so much, bothof you, for joining us.
As we get started for today, canyou tell us a little bit about
the grant that you recently hadthrough the Stearns Center
called Revision and Assessmentof Training Modules for Working
with Multilingual Students?
Maybe a little bit about thework and the impacts that you
(01:13):
hope it will have?
Shelby (01:15):
Yeah, so thank you, Rachel, for the introductions.
Our grant through the StearnsCenter was actually intended to
be a follow up to an initialgrant that I received with a
team of researchers from JamesMadison, Virginia Tech, and
George Mason.
Back in 2022, we applied for agrant through the 4VA, or the
(01:37):
4Virginia project that awardsgrants for collaborations
between Virginia universities,and our project then was to
create training modules forcommunication centers across the
country based on needs from boththeir administrative team and
from the consultant perspective.
So we first researched whatthese communication centers were
(01:58):
missing, what training did theyfeel like they needed, but
didn't have access to.
And the number 1 request acrossthe country was training for
working with multilinguallearners.
So it was a huge demand and sowe took our modules that we
created online.
They're an Open Access Resourcefor people to use, whether
they're in a communicationcenter as a consultant or as an
(02:20):
administrator.
And one of those modules was themost demanded module, the one
for multilingual learners andhow to work with them in a
consultation.
And so this grant from theStearns Center actually had us
working on gathering feedbackfrom the people who are actually
using that module to train andseeing how effective it was.
Idée (02:42):
And also, thanks for having me on this podcast,
Rachel.
I would just add that, likeShelby mentioned, Comm Center
training was not previouslyfocused a lot on working with
Multilingual students.
So, we also tried to addressthis need at Mason, which has a
very diverse student body andtry to focus in on being
intentionally inclusive in ourtraining of consultants here in
(03:04):
the lab for writing andcommunication and impact the
consultants who are nonmultilingual students and also
those who are multilingualstudents themselves to provide
them with research basedtechniques on helping
multilingual students who wantto improve their oral
communication skills here.
Rachel (03:23):
That's great.
Thank you both so much forsharing this.
We've been so excited in theStearns Center, not only to see
this work develop, but tosupport this through the grant
program as well.
And so let's talk a little bitabout the really practical
aspects of supporting allstudents here like Idée was just
mentioning.
And in particular, obviously,what we're here to talk about is
(03:43):
supporting our multilingualstudents as we're doing things
like teaching and grading andgiving feedback.
For my first question with this,just broadly, can you tell us a
little bit about what shouldinstructors be considering or
doing or maybe perhaps not doingin this type of situation?
Shelby (04:03):
That's a good question.
I think for us, the mainconsideration that we want
people to take away from thisaside from the practical skills,
is really just consideringcultural differences when
they're interacting withstudents and when students come
to them with concerns aboutthings like their accentedness.
One thing that we have a lot ofin the communication center, and
(04:25):
Idée can attest to this as well,is students coming in wanting to
get rid of their accent andeliminate it.
And we want to encourageinstructors and really anyone
who interacts with students toreally take the frame of mind
that it's not at all abouteliminating accents in speakers,
it's mostly about improvingunderstanding and helping them
(04:46):
reach their communication goalsrather than changing the way
that they speak.
And we should really be sort ofchanging our frame of mind,
especially as instructors, tothink about what an advantage it
is to have multilingual speakersin our classroom because it
makes us all better listeners,and I think especially in our
increasingly diverse world, youknow, we're sending out students
(05:08):
into the workforce where theyare going to be working with
linguistically diversepopulations, so the more often
we can expose them to differentsounded speech, the more well
prepared they're going to be.
Idée (05:21):
I would just add that in the field of applied
linguistics, that's referred toas translingualism, and I'd like
to draw on works ontranslingualism a little bit,
including Bobby Olson's work inthe context of writing centers,
and also drawing on works ofscholars that have most recently
talked about translingualism,like Horner and Kanagaraja.
Adopting a translingual approachmeans that we see differences in
(05:43):
language, not as a barrier, butas a resource for meaning
making.
I would encourage instructors torethink the habit of equating
differences in language use witherrors.
We also need to re examine whatwe think about being
multilingual.
Multilingual students,especially at Mason, come from
very different backgrounds.
They're not necessarily likesecond language speakers of
(06:03):
English.
Some of them have grown up withmultiple languages at home.
Some of them have recently movedto the US and have recently
started using English.
Some of them have been usingEnglish for a long time, but
they've just not got official oracademic training on writing and
speaking.
So considering all thesedifferences and the different
backgrounds they come from, weshould celebrate the linguistic
(06:24):
backgrounds of these writers andcreate the space for them to
draw from the entire linguisticrepertoire that they have
available based on the varietyof languages they speak.
And I would add to the conceptof accentedness that Shelby
brought up that, again, inapplied linguistics, the field
of pronunciation research, thereis a lot of research on
accentedness and the differencesit has with concepts like
(06:46):
intelligibility, which is howmuch a listener can understand a
speaker, and comprehensibility,which is how much effort a
listener needs to put intounderstanding a speaker.
It is possible that accentednessis perceived as really high,
like somebody is perceived tohave a very"foreign accent,"
quote unquote, but still they'rea hundred percent intelligible
to the listeners.
(07:06):
So having an accent does not inany way equal how much
understandable that person is.
Rachel (07:13):
And that's an excellent point, I think, that can also
bring us a little bit to, it'snot just our students who might
be multilingual, our instructorsas well.
I mean, unfortunately, sometimesinstructors might be getting
very negative reviews orfeedback on just the same thing
we're talking about there withtheir accents or something like
that.
So really here, we might belooking at creating an entire
community around multilingualismor translingualism as you were
(07:36):
mentioning, Idée.
So I appreciate that.
But let's talk a little bit moreabout what are some of the
strategies or tips orrecommendations that you can
share?
So what would you like ourlisteners to be thinking about
or actions they might take?
Idée (07:50):
So one thing I'd like instructors to have in mind as
they develop assignments fororal communication or even
written communication for theirstudents is the differences
between how understandablestudents are and how we think
about standard American English.
If somebody is understandable100%, it shouldn't matter that
they have an accent, either intheir speaking or in their
(08:11):
writing.
And research in pronunciation,focusing now on oral
communication, like, whenstudents are giving a
presentation, research has shownthat certain features of speech
or pronunciation has more impacton intelligibility.
And those are more what we callprosodic or supra segmental
features of pronunciation.
Things like intonation, wordstress, sentence stress, tone
(08:35):
and rhythm and even volume.
Those are things that are notconsidered segmental features,
which is like vowels andconsonants.
So, supra segmental featureshave a lot more impact on,
understandability.
So, one thing that I'd likeinstructors to have in mind is,
try to identify some of thesefactors that may impact
(08:56):
students' understandability intheir assessment of students or
in designing their assignments,and see how they can support
students in improving in thoseareas if it interferes with
their understandability.
And they can refer students toresources in those areas like
intonation, sentence stress andprominence and things like that.
Shelby (09:17):
I think the piece of advice or recommendation that I
would give is if you don't feelcomfortable as a linguistic
expert, you know, giving,providing linguistic advice, I
know for a lot of people thatfalls outside of their realm of
expertise, the best thing thatwe can do as educators is to
work on building our studentsconfidence in their oral
(09:38):
communication because we knowthat regardless of whether
you're a multilingual student orspeaker or not, the more
confident you are, the better ofa speaker you become.
And that's true for multilingualstudents as well.
Rachel (09:52):
I think these are great points, because here it sounds
like what we're really lookingat are key aspects.
And so let's maybe move a littlebit over into some more
logistics.
So how might we provideinstructions for like activities
or writing assignments or oralpresentations?
What do we want to say or dowhen we're setting these up with
(10:14):
our students?
Idée (10:15):
So, working with international students or
multilingual students ingeneral, we see a lot of
feedback that comes frominstructors that are not
specific or like what we callconstructive feedback in writing
center pedagogy.
And, that kind of feedback isusually not only confusing to
the students, but alsofrustrating and like, hurting
(10:37):
their confidence, and we don'twant to do that because when we
write on a student's paper thattheir English is not good or
they should fix some grammaticalconcepts or, take this to an
editor or to the writing centerand general feedback like that,
it only impacts students'confidence and makes them think
(10:57):
they're like terriblecommunicators, which they are
not.
So I would really encourageinstructors to familiarize
themselves with the specificaspects of writing that they can
provide feedback on.
They should definitelyprioritize things like content
and organization and argumentsand the way the flow of the
(11:18):
arguments may or may not makesense in the students' writings.
And focus on those aspects andwhen they provide written
feedback on a student's paper,be very specific about what
aspects of a sentence may not bemaking sense or what about the
paragraph needs work rather thansaying like,"Take this to the
writing center" or"Improve yourEnglish." And that kind of
(11:39):
reflects on people's biases orpreconceived notions about
having multilingual students andhaving their language being kind
of like"broken," quote unquote.
So it's really important toprovide specific feedback and I
encourage instructors to, beaware and mindful of the impact
their comments on students'papers have on them.
(12:00):
In terms of speaking, the samething basically thinking about
accents or features of accentthat do not necessarily impact
students' intelligibility.
I encourage instructors to thinkabout what parts of students'
speech and what aspects of theirpronunciation impacts
intelligibility.
For example, if a student isputting more stress on a word in
(12:22):
a sentence that is not reallyimportant, it might signal, the
message incorrectly anddifferently from what the
speaker actually intends.
So those aspects of studentspeaking can be things that the
instructor help them identifyand help them practice outside
the class.
They can refer to a lot ofresources that are out there on
YouTube.
There are a lot of videos onthings like pausing, sentence
(12:45):
stress, or thought grouping.
Rachel (12:49):
That's great.
Thank you so much.
I think here we're reallylooking at the key aspects of
providing feedback and feedbackthat's actionable.
And so as we continue this, arethere other things that you'd
like to share with us aboutassessment or like writing or
presentations in the particularcontext of multilingual
(13:10):
learners?
Shelby (13:11):
Yeah, I think when we're assessing public speaking,
especially any type of oralcommunication, you know, the
criteria that we use to assesspublic speaking comes from very
Western standards that we assumeto be proper English, and Idée
kind of mentioned this in thewritten form as well, but we
(13:33):
have these standards of what isan appropriate rate of speech,
how many verbal fillers are toomany before it starts to be
distracting, how much varietyshould you have in your tone of
voice?
And those standards, again,really are pretty inconsiderate
of our multilingual speakersbecause we have speakers coming
from languages that naturallyhave a faster or slower rate of
(13:55):
speech, or coming from nativelanguages where maybe there
isn't as much variety in tone.
And so when they do things likespeak in English in an oral
presentation, and we usestandards that were developed to
assess native English speakers,it presents a pretty unfair
standard.
So when we're assessing oralcommunication, we should be
(14:17):
instead focusing on that overallmessage and how understandable
it is and then givingconstructive detailed feedback
on how to improve those vocalelements that could be perhaps
affecting the overallunderstandability.
Idée (14:33):
And I would just add that instructors should take all of
these things into considerationwhen developing their rubrics
and again, be very specific intheir rubrics of what they mean
when they say like delivery orthings like quality of writing,
these are very general termsthat are very broad and can be
interpreted differently.
(14:53):
So if they're thinking aboutlike sentence level issues, they
should call it something likethat or grammatical concepts,
and use words that clearlytransfer the message about what
kind of assessment is going tobe done and what areas of either
writing or speaking is going tobe assessed in each category of
their rubrics.
I would just encourage them tothink about the specificity of
(15:16):
the terminology they use intheir rubrics as well.
Shelby (15:20):
The last thing to add I would say is when you're
acknowledging that a student isdoing something well in an oral
presentation, instead of justwriting great volume or good
variety and tone, explaining whyit is good is always helpful
because sometimes students arenot, all of us are not aware of
(15:41):
the things that we do well, andsometimes we don't do them well
on purpose.
And so when we can identify forstudents, you know, your variety
in tone makes you sound reallyexcited about this topic.
When we are able to identify theeffects of the good things that
they're doing or the reasons whythey're good, it reinforces to
(16:02):
them and it's a much morememorable piece of feedback than
if we just write great volume.
So, I think, like Idée said, themore specific we can be, the
better.
Idée (16:11):
Defintely.
Rachel (16:13):
So when we're looking at this, we're looking at specific
and actionable and positive.
They're really emphasizing notonly areas for improvement, but
also maybe we're sandwichingwith what's being done well and
why or the impacts for thosethings.
That's great.
So as we wrap up ourconversation here, can you just
briefly wrap up your thoughts onhow this conversation that we've
(16:37):
been having represents akeystone concept in teaching?
Shelby (16:43):
I think, for us, this is, to me, especially, this is,
like, exactly what it means toengage in inclusive pedagogy,
where we are considering thatall of the students who are in
our classrooms they don't comefrom the same experience, they
don't have the same background,and so in order for us to
provide an equitable experienceto those students, we have to be
(17:06):
making efforts to acknowledgethat some students are going to
need different resources andsome students' feedback is going
to be different, right?
When we're working withmultilingual students, it's not,
you know, grading easy on themto consider the overall
understandability of theirmessage rather than their tone
(17:28):
and their rate, but it isproviding an equitable
experience because they arecoming to that classroom from a
diverse place.
And, you know, as we know,multilingualism is a huge
strength.
It is an excellent skill tohave; it creates so many more
opportunities for students, andit should not be something that
(17:49):
they bring into the classroomand then feel like they are
punished for It should besomething that we are providing
them enough resources to wherethey feel like they have just as
good of a chance to besuccessful as every other
student in that classroom.
Idée (18:03):
And, of course, obviously we're here to support these
students and every student atMason.
So, to all the instructors whoare listening to us, if your
students need support in theirspeaking or writing, please send
them to the Lab for Writing andCommunication.
Our writing center consultantsand communication center
consultants are trained to workwith multilingual students in
(18:24):
particular, and we're happy tosupport them in, developing
their skills all the more.
Rachel (18:31):
That's wonderful.
Thank you for that shout outthere as well.
We'll include some of theresources that were mentioned in
the show notes so that ourlisteners will have that as
well.
But thank you so much to ourguests from this episode, Shelby
Broberg and Dr.
Idée Edalatishams.
And as we wrap up, I just wantto thank you again so much for
your time and sharing thesestrategies because I think these
(18:51):
were great.
So actionable for our listenershere.
And we look forward to sharingour next episode with you on
Keystone Concepts in Teachingwith episodes every two weeks.
So thank you so much.
Shelby (19:05):
Thank you.
Idée (19:05):
Thanks for having us.
Hello and welcome.
My name is Rachel Yoho, and I'myour host for Keystone Concepts
in Teaching, a higher educationpodcast from the Stearns Center
for Teaching and Learning, wherewe share impactful and evidence
based teaching practices tosupport all students and
faculty.
In this episode, we're going tobe talking about teaching
multilingual students andmultilingual students as
(00:29):
learners in our spaces.
I'm excited to be joined by twoguests.
Our first guest in this episodeis Shelby Broberg.
Shelby is the CommunicationCenter Director and an
instructor here at George MasonUniversity.
We're also joined today by Dr.
Idée Edalatishams.
She is the Faculty ESLSpecialist at George Mason's
(00:51):
Writing Center where she trainsand mentors consultants to work
effectively with multilinguallearners.
And so, thank you so much, bothof you, for joining us.
As we get started for today, canyou tell us a little bit about
the grant that you recently hadthrough the Stearns Center
called Revision and Assessmentof Training Modules for Working
with Multilingual Students?
Maybe a little bit about thework and the impacts that you
(01:13):
hope it will have?
Shelby (01:15):
Yeah, so thank you, Rachel, for the introductions.
Our grant through the StearnsCenter was actually intended to
be a follow up to an initialgrant that I received with a
team of researchers from JamesMadison, Virginia Tech, and
George Mason.
Back in 2022, we applied for agrant through the 4VA, or the
(01:37):
4Virginia project that awardsgrants for collaborations
between Virginia universities,and our project then was to
create training modules forcommunication centers across the
country based on needs from boththeir administrative team and
from the consultant perspective.
So we first researched whatthese communication centers were
(01:58):
missing, what training did theyfeel like they needed, but
didn't have access to.
And the number 1 request acrossthe country was training for
working with multilinguallearners.
So it was a huge demand and sowe took our modules that we
created online.
They're an Open Access Resourcefor people to use, whether
they're in a communicationcenter as a consultant or as an
(02:20):
administrator.
And one of those modules was themost demanded module, the one
for multilingual learners andhow to work with them in a
consultation.
And so this grant from theStearns Center actually had us
working on gathering feedbackfrom the people who are actually
using that module to train andseeing how effective it was.
Idée (02:42):
And also, thanks for having me on this podcast,
Rachel.
I would just add that, likeShelby mentioned, Comm Center
training was not previouslyfocused a lot on working with
Multilingual students.
So, we also tried to addressthis need at Mason, which has a
very diverse student body andtry to focus in on being
intentionally inclusive in ourtraining of consultants here in
(03:04):
the lab for writing andcommunication and impact the
consultants who are nonmultilingual students and also
those who are multilingualstudents themselves to provide
them with research basedtechniques on helping
multilingual students who wantto improve their oral
communication skills here.
Rachel (03:23):
That's great.
Thank you both so much forsharing this.
We've been so excited in theStearns Center, not only to see
this work develop, but tosupport this through the grant
program as well.
And so let's talk a little bitabout the really practical
aspects of supporting allstudents here like Idée was just
mentioning.
And in particular, obviously,what we're here to talk about is
(03:43):
supporting our multilingualstudents as we're doing things
like teaching and grading andgiving feedback.
For my first question with this,just broadly, can you tell us a
little bit about what shouldinstructors be considering or
doing or maybe perhaps not doingin this type of situation?
Shelby (04:03):
That's a good question.
I think for us, the mainconsideration that we want
people to take away from thisaside from the practical skills,
is really just consideringcultural differences when
they're interacting withstudents and when students come
to them with concerns aboutthings like their accentedness.
One thing that we have a lot ofin the communication center, and
(04:25):
Idée can attest to this as well,is students coming in wanting to
get rid of their accent andeliminate it.
And we want to encourageinstructors and really anyone
who interacts with students toreally take the frame of mind
that it's not at all abouteliminating accents in speakers,
it's mostly about improvingunderstanding and helping them
(04:46):
reach their communication goalsrather than changing the way
that they speak.
And we should really be sort ofchanging our frame of mind,
especially as instructors, tothink about what an advantage it
is to have multilingual speakersin our classroom because it
makes us all better listeners,and I think especially in our
increasingly diverse world, youknow, we're sending out students
(05:08):
into the workforce where theyare going to be working with
linguistically diversepopulations, so the more often
we can expose them to differentsounded speech, the more well
prepared they're going to be.
Idée (05:21):
I would just add that in the field of applied
linguistics, that's referred toas translingualism, and I'd like
to draw on works ontranslingualism a little bit,
including Bobby Olson's work inthe context of writing centers,
and also drawing on works ofscholars that have most recently
talked about translingualism,like Horner and Kanagaraja.
Adopting a translingual approachmeans that we see differences in
(05:43):
language, not as a barrier, butas a resource for meaning
making.
I would encourage instructors torethink the habit of equating
differences in language use witherrors.
We also need to re examine whatwe think about being
multilingual.
Multilingual students,especially at Mason, come from
very different backgrounds.
They're not necessarily likesecond language speakers of
(06:03):
English.
Some of them have grown up withmultiple languages at home.
Some of them have recently movedto the US and have recently
started using English.
Some of them have been usingEnglish for a long time, but
they've just not got official oracademic training on writing and
speaking.
So considering all thesedifferences and the different
backgrounds they come from, weshould celebrate the linguistic
(06:24):
backgrounds of these writers andcreate the space for them to
draw from the entire linguisticrepertoire that they have
available based on the varietyof languages they speak.
And I would add to the conceptof accentedness that Shelby
brought up that, again, inapplied linguistics, the field
of pronunciation research, thereis a lot of research on
accentedness and the differencesit has with concepts like
(06:46):
intelligibility, which is howmuch a listener can understand a
speaker, and comprehensibility,which is how much effort a
listener needs to put intounderstanding a speaker.
It is possible that accentednessis perceived as really high,
like somebody is perceived tohave a very"foreign accent,"
quote unquote, but still they'rea hundred percent intelligible
to the listeners.
(07:06):
So having an accent does not inany way equal how much
understandable that person is.
Rachel (07:13):
And that's an excellent point, I think, that can also
bring us a little bit to, it'snot just our students who might
be multilingual, our instructorsas well.
I mean, unfortunately, sometimesinstructors might be getting
very negative reviews orfeedback on just the same thing
we're talking about there withtheir accents or something like
that.
So really here, we might belooking at creating an entire
community around multilingualismor translingualism as you were
(07:36):
mentioning, Idée.
So I appreciate that.
But let's talk a little bit moreabout what are some of the
strategies or tips orrecommendations that you can
share?
So what would you like ourlisteners to be thinking about
or actions they might take?
Idée (07:50):
So one thing I'd like instructors to have in mind as
they develop assignments fororal communication or even
written communication for theirstudents is the differences
between how understandablestudents are and how we think
about standard American English.
If somebody is understandable100%, it shouldn't matter that
they have an accent, either intheir speaking or in their
(08:11):
writing.
And research in pronunciation,focusing now on oral
communication, like, whenstudents are giving a
presentation, research has shownthat certain features of speech
or pronunciation has more impacton intelligibility.
And those are more what we callprosodic or supra segmental
features of pronunciation.
Things like intonation, wordstress, sentence stress, tone
(08:35):
and rhythm and even volume.
Those are things that are notconsidered segmental features,
which is like vowels andconsonants.
So, supra segmental featureshave a lot more impact on,
understandability.
So, one thing that I'd likeinstructors to have in mind is,
try to identify some of thesefactors that may impact
(08:56):
students' understandability intheir assessment of students or
in designing their assignments,and see how they can support
students in improving in thoseareas if it interferes with
their understandability.
And they can refer students toresources in those areas like
intonation, sentence stress andprominence and things like that.
Shelby (09:17):
I think the piece of advice or recommendation that I
would give is if you don't feelcomfortable as a linguistic
expert, you know, giving,providing linguistic advice, I
know for a lot of people thatfalls outside of their realm of
expertise, the best thing thatwe can do as educators is to
work on building our studentsconfidence in their oral
(09:38):
communication because we knowthat regardless of whether
you're a multilingual student orspeaker or not, the more
confident you are, the better ofa speaker you become.
And that's true for multilingualstudents as well.
Rachel (09:52):
I think these are great points, because here it sounds
like what we're really lookingat are key aspects.
And so let's maybe move a littlebit over into some more
logistics.
So how might we provideinstructions for like activities
or writing assignments or oralpresentations?
What do we want to say or dowhen we're setting these up with
(10:14):
our students?
Idée (10:15):
So, working with international students or
multilingual students ingeneral, we see a lot of
feedback that comes frominstructors that are not
specific or like what we callconstructive feedback in writing
center pedagogy.
And, that kind of feedback isusually not only confusing to
the students, but alsofrustrating and like, hurting
(10:37):
their confidence, and we don'twant to do that because when we
write on a student's paper thattheir English is not good or
they should fix some grammaticalconcepts or, take this to an
editor or to the writing centerand general feedback like that,
it only impacts students'confidence and makes them think
(10:57):
they're like terriblecommunicators, which they are
not.
So I would really encourageinstructors to familiarize
themselves with the specificaspects of writing that they can
provide feedback on.
They should definitelyprioritize things like content
and organization and argumentsand the way the flow of the
(11:18):
arguments may or may not makesense in the students' writings.
And focus on those aspects andwhen they provide written
feedback on a student's paper,be very specific about what
aspects of a sentence may not bemaking sense or what about the
paragraph needs work rather thansaying like,"Take this to the
writing center" or"Improve yourEnglish." And that kind of
(11:39):
reflects on people's biases orpreconceived notions about
having multilingual students andhaving their language being kind
of like"broken," quote unquote.
So it's really important toprovide specific feedback and I
encourage instructors to, beaware and mindful of the impact
their comments on students'papers have on them.
(12:00):
In terms of speaking, the samething basically thinking about
accents or features of accentthat do not necessarily impact
students' intelligibility.
I encourage instructors to thinkabout what parts of students'
speech and what aspects of theirpronunciation impacts
intelligibility.
For example, if a student isputting more stress on a word in
(12:22):
a sentence that is not reallyimportant, it might signal, the
message incorrectly anddifferently from what the
speaker actually intends.
So those aspects of studentspeaking can be things that the
instructor help them identifyand help them practice outside
the class.
They can refer to a lot ofresources that are out there on
YouTube.
There are a lot of videos onthings like pausing, sentence
(12:45):
stress, or thought grouping.
Rachel (12:49):
That's great.
Thank you so much.
I think here we're reallylooking at the key aspects of
providing feedback and feedbackthat's actionable.
And so as we continue this, arethere other things that you'd
like to share with us aboutassessment or like writing or
presentations in the particularcontext of multilingual
(13:10):
learners?
Shelby (13:11):
Yeah, I think when we're assessing public speaking,
especially any type of oralcommunication, you know, the
criteria that we use to assesspublic speaking comes from very
Western standards that we assumeto be proper English, and Idée
kind of mentioned this in thewritten form as well, but we
(13:33):
have these standards of what isan appropriate rate of speech,
how many verbal fillers are toomany before it starts to be
distracting, how much varietyshould you have in your tone of
voice?
And those standards, again,really are pretty inconsiderate
of our multilingual speakersbecause we have speakers coming
from languages that naturallyhave a faster or slower rate of
(13:55):
speech, or coming from nativelanguages where maybe there
isn't as much variety in tone.
And so when they do things likespeak in English in an oral
presentation, and we usestandards that were developed to
assess native English speakers,it presents a pretty unfair
standard.
So when we're assessing oralcommunication, we should be
(14:17):
instead focusing on that overallmessage and how understandable
it is and then givingconstructive detailed feedback
on how to improve those vocalelements that could be perhaps
affecting the overallunderstandability.
Idée (14:33):
And I would just add that instructors should take all of
these things into considerationwhen developing their rubrics
and again, be very specific intheir rubrics of what they mean
when they say like delivery orthings like quality of writing,
these are very general termsthat are very broad and can be
interpreted differently.
(14:53):
So if they're thinking aboutlike sentence level issues, they
should call it something likethat or grammatical concepts,
and use words that clearlytransfer the message about what
kind of assessment is going tobe done and what areas of either
writing or speaking is going tobe assessed in each category of
their rubrics.
I would just encourage them tothink about the specificity of
(15:16):
the terminology they use intheir rubrics as well.
Shelby (15:20):
The last thing to add I would say is when you're
acknowledging that a student isdoing something well in an oral
presentation, instead of justwriting great volume or good
variety and tone, explaining whyit is good is always helpful
because sometimes students arenot, all of us are not aware of
(15:41):
the things that we do well, andsometimes we don't do them well
on purpose.
And so when we can identify forstudents, you know, your variety
in tone makes you sound reallyexcited about this topic.
When we are able to identify theeffects of the good things that
they're doing or the reasons whythey're good, it reinforces to
(16:02):
them and it's a much morememorable piece of feedback than
if we just write great volume.
So, I think, like Idée said, themore specific we can be, the
better.
Idée (16:11):
Defintely.
Rachel (16:13):
So when we're looking at this, we're looking at specific
and actionable and positive.
They're really emphasizing notonly areas for improvement, but
also maybe we're sandwichingwith what's being done well and
why or the impacts for thosethings.
That's great.
So as we wrap up ourconversation here, can you just
briefly wrap up your thoughts onhow this conversation that we've
(16:37):
been having represents akeystone concept in teaching?
Shelby (16:43):
I think, for us, this is, to me, especially, this is,
like, exactly what it means toengage in inclusive pedagogy,
where we are considering thatall of the students who are in
our classrooms they don't comefrom the same experience, they
don't have the same background,and so in order for us to
provide an equitable experienceto those students, we have to be
(17:06):
making efforts to acknowledgethat some students are going to
need different resources andsome students' feedback is going
to be different, right?
When we're working withmultilingual students, it's not,
you know, grading easy on themto consider the overall
understandability of theirmessage rather than their tone
(17:28):
and their rate, but it isproviding an equitable
experience because they arecoming to that classroom from a
diverse place.
And, you know, as we know,multilingualism is a huge
strength.
It is an excellent skill tohave; it creates so many more
opportunities for students, andit should not be something that
(17:49):
they bring into the classroomand then feel like they are
punished for It should besomething that we are providing
them enough resources to wherethey feel like they have just as
good of a chance to besuccessful as every other
student in that classroom.
Idée (18:03):
And, of course, obviously we're here to support these
students and every student atMason.
So, to all the instructors whoare listening to us, if your
students need support in theirspeaking or writing, please send
them to the Lab for Writing andCommunication.
Our writing center consultantsand communication center
consultants are trained to workwith multilingual students in
(18:24):
particular, and we're happy tosupport them in, developing
their skills all the more.
Rachel (18:31):
That's wonderful.
Thank you for that shout outthere as well.
We'll include some of theresources that were mentioned in
the show notes so that ourlisteners will have that as
well.
But thank you so much to ourguests from this episode, Shelby
Broberg and Dr.
Idée Edalatishams.
And as we wrap up, I just wantto thank you again so much for
your time and sharing thesestrategies because I think these
(18:51):
were great.
So actionable for our listenershere.
And we look forward to sharingour next episode with you on
Keystone Concepts in Teachingwith episodes every two weeks.
So thank you so much.
Shelby (19:05):
Thank you.
Idée (19:05):
Thanks for having us.
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