{"id":403,"date":"2022-02-18T16:46:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/?p=403"},"modified":"2022-02-18T16:46:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:46:35","slug":"navigating-multilingualism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/success\/2022\/02\/18\/navigating-multilingualism\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Multilingualism"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Kelley Calvert<\/a><\/p>\n

In training consultants to support multilingual writers in the Writing Center last fall, I struggled to determine where to begin. The topic of multilingual support is so vast, while the number of contact hours for training remains so limited. Then, I came across the NPR podcast Rough Translation with an episode entitled, \u201cNon-native Speakers Navigate the World of \u2018Good\u2019 and \u2018Bad; English<\/a>\u201d in which global communication specialist Heather Hansen<\/a> discusses English as an international language and problematizes the notion of \u201cnative speakers.\u201d Early in the podcast, she shares her experience as an English speaker immersed in a German-speaking classroom, saying, \u201cIf only I could do this in English, they would all know how smart I am.\u201d This statement served as a lightbulb for me: the first step in understanding how to support multilingual students involves empathy\u2013not just in the sense of understanding their experiences, but in terms of understanding our own.<\/p>\n

I offer the following notes on the training as a springboard for ideas and insights into our thinking on multilingualism. As educators, we can use the podcast to facilitate a conversation in the classroom or train other peer educators on campus; on a personal level, we can simply listen to the podcast and bring some self-awareness to our own perceptions of language and language learning during a long drive or quiet moment at home.<\/p>\n

We began our 50-minute Writing Center training by listening to a segment of the podcast. I chose minutes 8:18 to 13:13 of the 34-minute podcast because I felt these five minutes provided the most material for discussion, covering statistics on English speakers globally, offering surprising information about cross-cultural communication, and placing the burden of conversation on both<\/strong> the speaker and listener. While listening to the podcast, I asked consultants to jot down one idea that surprised or interested them.<\/p>\n

After listening, many consultants shared their thoughts. Several noted that they had never thought about the fact that 4.4 billion people speak English in the world, with 4 billion learning the language in a classroom setting. That means that \u201cnative speakers\u201d make up a tiny fraction of the world\u2019s English-speaking population. Another salient area of noticing revolved around the frequent use of idioms (e.g., the whole nine yards, to touch base) in American English and how difficult these idioms can be for non-native speakers. Finally, many consultants noted how Hansen problematized the notion of the native speaker: Indian, South African, and Singaporean people grow up speaking English, so why aren\u2019t they included in the native-speaker canon?<\/p>\n

From this warm-up discussion, we moved into a \u201cConnect-Extend-Challenge\u201d activity, based on Harvard\u2019s Thinking Routines<\/a>. On post-it notes, I asked consultants to answer questions in the following sequence:<\/p>\n