Incorporating Linguistic Justice into Your Work as an Instructor
Reflect on Your Language Background
The first step in considering linguistic justice is reflecting on the relationship between language and power and the role it has had in your life. Our language backgrounds can bring us power, oppression, opportunity, strife, connections with others, etc., just like any other aspects of our identities. Specifically in academia, the language of power is a version of English that many call “standard” and, even more specifically, a formal register of Standard English that values certain vocabulary and sentence structures.
Whether you’ve always been educated and socialized in “standard” English, learned it as a foreign language, or many other various paths, considering the role of language in your own life, including what ways you’ve been privileged or marginalized by it, why you have certain subjective beliefs about “good” writing and “good” accents, should be your first step towards promoting linguistic justice.
A holistic reflection on your language background should consider the relationship between power and language and how that affects your work at the institutional level, at the curriculum level, and at the level of one-on-one interactions with students. In this way, it can benefit all students, not just multilingual students.
Example
To introduce the complicated issue of applying linguistic justice to your work as an instructor, I will share a story that ties together many of the relevant issues.
A few years ago, I taught an English language support class for first-year international students at a state university in the Midwest. A group of students from a variety of countries came to my class directly from a popular, general education seminar course that they had together. One day, they came into the classroom all deep in discussion (which was unusual!) and asked me if I could help them understand what happened in their class. They told me that they had a whole-class discussion and small-group discussions about indigenous people being used as sport mascots. Most of them were unfamiliar with the word (and for some, concept) “indigenous,” and most were unfamiliar with both the word and concept of a “mascot.” When the topic was introduced in class, many of them googled and otherwise looked up and translated the words, but they still didn’t understand. They shared that the class discussion was tense and heated among their American classmates, and that they were confused about why. One said that in his small group discussion, he said that he didn’t see why there was an issue, and then he felt attacked by his group mates who disagreed with him. He was unaware of the history or present context of indigenous people in the US. Some students were able to understand what a mascot is by googling it, but they still had no insight into the cultural significance or how or why they are used. Some were concerned that they wouldn’t get their participation points for the class session because they spent most of the class googling on their phones and speaking in their native languages together to try and understand the topic.
This example shows how multilingual and international students’ language issues are often issues of culture and lack of context. While this is a direct and very on-the-nose example, students may have the same kind of issues on a smaller, subtler scale throughout classes that don’t include discussion of cultural issues in the US.
Concrete Actions
There are concrete steps you can take as an instructor to promote linguistic justice for multilingual students. Some of these are generally good practices that contribute to linguistic justice and some are specific to working with multilingual students.
Linguistic justice in your curriculum
Select resources / content that represent global issues related to your course (when possible). If all your examples come from a US context, your US students may already be familiar with the situation whereas some international students may need more context. You and / or the students may blame language on a lack of understanding when it could only / also be lack of context.
This idea includes your more casual cultural references. Just as you may find that American undergrad students don’t have context for cultural references from a few decades ago, international students may lack context for American pop culture references. You can’t assume that everyone will understand your cultural references.
Build multiple ways for students to engage with course materials and participate. Some students are more confident with writing in English and some are more confident with speaking. Provide students with options for participation that are mindful of this.
Be clear. Consult with colleagues and WAC resources when crafting assignment prompts to enhance your clarity.
Linguistic justice in your assessment
Be flexible. There are a variety of ways that you can be flexible that would benefit multilingual students (and in general), including: allow students to turn in high stakes written assignments early for feedback, allow students to have extensions, allow students to resubmit revised work.
Doing academic work in a foreign language doesn’t necessarily result in difficulties. However, research consistently finds that doing academic work in a foreign language takes longer than doing it in a first language, especially when approaching new and unfamiliar tasks. Some multilingual students may take much more time to complete your coursework than you want or expect. (Note that there is a lot of variation here that is based on individual-level factors rather than language factors!).
Be clear. Communicate to students how they will be assessed, providing rubrics / grading criteria.
Assess students’ assignments based on the purpose of the assignment rather than their ability to correctly use the conventions of the version of English language that’s generally expected in higher education.
Understand that students’ issues with assignments (writing assignments or others) may often be related to their lack of experience with a kind of task rather than language skills. You may ask students to engage with course materials by asking them about their opinions, experiences, or perceptions. This may be an unfamiliar task for students who come from an educational background where no one asks about their opinions and perspectives on course content. Likewise, you may want students to paraphrase course material, which may be an unfamiliar task with unclear expectations that can lead to students doing what you perceive to be plagiarism.
Consider what bigger, more holistic issues of understanding students may be having beyond language.
Linguistic justice in your individual interactions
Understand that students’ written English and spoken English can be very different.
Demonstrate that you value students’ language background rather than positioning their non-nativeness as a deficit to their work in your course. This can include:
- Encouraging students to provide examples from their own cultural and linguistic contexts (without putting them on the spot or expecting them to represent a whole country / language)
- When a student centers language when presenting their own issues (e.g. “I’m not a native speaker, so…”), respond in a way that demonstrates value for their multilingualism without diminishing their perception of their struggle.
Get to know your students. The best kinds of questions to ask students to get to know them are genuine questions. Some students complain that when people from other countries ask them questions about their countries, it’s often in a way that centers demonstration of their existing knowledge of the place rather than genuine attempts to learn something new. Ask questions that will allow you to learn something new. Also–you don’t have to apologize for not already knowing things!
Don’t blame students’ academic issues on language skills, and encourage students to think beyond language when they blame issues on language proficiency. Maybe language skills have something to do with some issues, but being a non-native speaker of English is not the root of every student’s issues. If it were, then native speakers wouldn’t have any issues! Students may themselves blame English language skills for their issues. Help them nuance this and provide feedback on what they can improve beyond language.
Further Reading
Campus Politics and the English Language in Inside Higher Ed by Peter A. Coclanis
Contesting Standardized English from American Association of University Professors by Missy Watson
