Page 28 - Center for Faculty Development and Learning

languages; therefore, their level of English may not be developed enough to allow
them to keep up with academic content delivered in English, a language they may not

fully master yet (Baker, 2017). Also, despite one of the pre-requisites for ADU admis-
sion being a certain level of English proficiency, these proficiency exams do not always
express the true linguistic ability of the students since they merge all four skills in one
score. In fact, research has found that Emirati high-schoolers are among the ones with
the lowest proficiency in English in the Arabian Peninsula (Baker, 2017; Gobert, 2023;

Siemund et al. 2020).
• The Englishization of higher education is often associated with westernized ways of
teaching and learning as well as of assessing student knowledge which may not always
compare align with the ways students were used to in high school, meaning that extra
effort and/or time from students may be needed to adapt to unfamiliar teaching and
learning practices.

• In many cases, Englishizing education may mean westernizing topics to be taught and
these topics may not always be culturally appropriate or even appealing to the stu-
dents as they cannot relate to them.
▪ What can be done?

In the last decades, the multilingual turn (May, 2014) has changed how language-in-ed-
ucation is perceived, bringing with it a plurilingual stance that minimizes monolingual ap-
proaches (the language of instruction only or target-language only) and acknowledges the
value of linguistic inclusion in teaching and learning practices. Plurilingual pedagogies value
students’ previous and current linguistic and cultural backgrounds, seeing them as an asset
rather than a hindrance. In other words, student linguistic repertoires are regarded as an

integral part of their learning experience, not a problem (for example, “we only use English
in this classroom” statements are frowned upon). Plurilingual approaches invite students
to utilize their full linguistic knowledge in an autonomous and almost self-directed manner
to benefit their learning (Coelho et al., 2022). A study developed precisely at ADU which

collected student opinions after plurilingual approaches were adopted in their classes re-
vealed that students felt that such strategies promoted a sense of academic success and
student agency (Coelho, 2023). The question now is: how can we, as faculty, implement
plurilingual pedagogies at ADU? Here are some tips based on a framework developed by
Coelho & Steinhagen (2023) which you can explore further in the volume Plurilingual Ped-
agogy in the Arabian Peninsula available at ADU library, if interested, especially if you would

like to see some misconceptions being demystified, such as “If I allow other languages in
my class, I am discriminating students who do not speak those languages” or “I don’t speak
the first/home language of my students, so I cannot apply plurilingual approaches”.

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