Page 29 - Center for Faculty Development and Learning

▪ Tips
• The first and most obvi-
ous suggestion: Allow
students to use transla-
tion resources during
class (Duarte & van der
Ploeg, 2019).
• Encourage interactions
in other languages in the
classroom (for example,
even though a final prod-
uct is expected to be pro-
duced in English, allow-
ing for pair or group dis-
cussions, brainstorming
sessions, pre-task activities, etc. in other languages may make students’ ideas flow
more naturally, contributing to a better final product) (Henderson & Ingram, 2018;
Coelho & Steinhagen, 2023b; Van Viegen, 2020).
• Promote the use of bibliographic references in other languages even though the final
product is expected in English (Duarte & van der Ploeg, 2019).
• Foster language comparisons, especially in language learning contexts (Duarte & van
der Ploeg, 2019).
• Encourage peer-to-peer instruction or collaborative learning in other languages (Abi-
ria et al., 2013)
• Use multimodality as much as possible! (Lin et al., 2010 in Lin et al., 2020) – Cater to
the superdiverse ways of learning that your multilingual and multicultural classes will
surely have. Ways of learning are usually culturally (and even linguistically!) rooted
which means that not every student in your class learns the same way. Therefore,
apply as much variety as possible when choosing your teaching methods, so that you
do not always rely on just one pedagogical strategy.
• Last but not least, as Coelho & Steinhagen (2023a) stated, always feel the pulse of
your students to better understand their predisposition to engage in plurilingual ways
of learning. If, for any reason, the general feeling is that your students are not keen
on utilizing plurilingual practices, your best choice is not to use them!
To conclude, “even if some teachers may still feel uncertain about applying plurilin-
gualism in the classroom, becoming plurilingual pedagogically literate will, at least, serve
as an acknowledgment of students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, per-
haps, gradually contribute to the recognition of the plurilingual stance, or others that honor
students’ diverse linguistic and cultural repertoires, as an approach that may walk hand in
hand with the monolingual perspective” (Coelho & Steinhagen, 2023a, p. 156).
Note: References can be provided via e-mail.

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