Audio file Bridging Multilingualism.mp4 Transcript 00:00:02 Prof Jo Angouri Everybody it's, uh, great, uh, to see you here. And a very warm welcome to Shawn who 00:00:13 Prof Jo Angouri Joins us from from Princeton, and we've been Helena has been working with Shawn to make sure that we find the time in her busy schedule. And despite all the disruption so that we make this happen. So it's wonderful that. 00:00:30 Prof Jo Angouri We we have this opportunity and in some ways technology has facilitated this dialogue and made some things more possible. So we continue a theme that is very central is one of the our network central themes. 00:00:49 Prof Jo Angouri Around multilingual. 00:00:52 Prof Jo Angouri And as you remember, we started discussing how we could encourage multilingualism and multilingual pedagogies and sort of learn and come together in multilingual ecosystems. And what are the opportunities that this provides? 00:01:11 Prof Jo Angouri What are the challenges? How we can actually benefit and engage? And Shawn is is an absolute expert in in many parts of this system of issues that I've just touched upon and it's really wonderful opportunity to have her with us. 00:01:28 Prof Jo Angouri She comes from comparative literature and her expertise is in multilingual writing, which is very, very close to the interests of many of us in in, in our, in our group and in our. 00:01:43 Prof Jo Angouri Hub and Shawn has done. 00:01:48 Prof Jo Angouri Her work focusing on the Caribbean and looking into how writers represent conflict between languages. 00:01:56 Prof Jo Angouri And particularly the concept of colonial languages and creoles, which obviously is really very important on issues around migration and social inequality and migration and issues of social justice, is, I think, what brings together all the clusters in our migration, identity and translation network. So I think. 00:02:16 Prof Jo Angouri I'm particularly looking forward to Shawn's talk and as I was actually reading her expertise and her teaching and and her bio saying, well, I hope the. 00:02:25 Prof Jo Angouri Talk will be. 00:02:25 Prof Jo Angouri About this. So maybe about that or maybe about this as well, so. 00:02:29 Prof Jo Angouri I'm I'm I'm sure we're going to benefit from your expertise. And also I think what is really very, very relevant in different ways that Shawn's teaching is in a programme that it is very interdisciplinary and attracts a multidisciplinary community and. 00:02:49 Prof Jo Angouri And in meeting, we're very interested also in terms of multiple voices and how what this means in terms of various affordances, but also these processes of gatekeeping and what this means. And and I know Sean is actually very interested in challenging that part as well. 00:03:09 Prof Jo Angouri So I don't want to say much before Princeton, Shawn was at Rutgers and looking into multilingual literature and the relationship between the the multilingual literature from the Caribbean and engaging in political debates about language in the region, in particular, which again fits very much. 00:03:30 Prof Jo Angouri With the interests of of many of us here today, and I really. 00:03:36 Prof Jo Angouri Also particularly interested in the ways in which Sean is bringing language ideology not only in research but also in sort of teaching practise and the various practises so many angles, all very relevant to many of us, and all bringing together and continuing a thing that we've started. 00:03:56 Prof Jo Angouri Exploring. So, Shawn, I'm going to pass. 00:03:59 Prof Jo Angouri On the floor to. 00:04:00 Prof Jo Angouri You and you have we we we have about an hour and up to you how you want to structure and how interactive you want us to be. 00:04:11 Prof Jo Angouri But we're very much looking forward and thank you again for accepting our invitation and for being, for being with us. 00:04:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Thank you so much. 00:04:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I really, really appreciate the opportunity to be knowing all of you today, and I also appreciate your patience as I figure out teams because this is my first time using Microsoft Teams and as we all know from moving to online teaching and learning, things do not. 00:04:42 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Always go exactly as we. 00:04:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Imagine they will. 00:04:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez First question for you all is can you see the first page of? 00:04:50 Dr Shawn Gonzalez This slide now. 00:04:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Oh, perfect. Excellent. Thank you so much. 00:04:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And if you would like to follow? 00:04:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Along with me today. 00:05:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There's this website menti.com. 00:05:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And if you can go. 00:05:05 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To that site on a separate. 00:05:07 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Device. So if you have a phone with you. 00:05:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And enter the code there you can follow along with the presentation. 00:05:14 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I'll have some interactive pieces that you can. 00:05:19 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Contribute to so that we. 00:05:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And if you go back and forth a little. 00:05:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Bit during the. 00:05:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Presentation itself and. 00:05:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Then return to some of these things after the presentation. When we shift to the more open discussion format so. 00:05:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez With that, I wanted to talk. 00:05:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez A little bit today about the way that we navigate. 00:05:41 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Our own research interests the things that we are doing in our own research and writing and our identities as teachers. 00:05:49 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Within the broader university system. 00:05:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So, as researchers, with an interest in translation or multilingualism or migration, we inevitably. 00:05:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Face some level of. 00:06:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Tension between our research agendas and our practises, teachers, scholars and activists have noted a monolingual bias in the universities. In the US, the UK. 00:06:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And Australia, among others. 00:06:14 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And we've critiqued this widespread use of submersion education or a single swim approach to English medium education, and all this approach has been really broadly criticised at both the primary and the secondary level. It really remains the norm at the university level. 00:06:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Where language proficiency, at least in the context that. 00:06:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I've been exposed to. 00:06:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Is largely ignored outside of admissions requirements or remedial settings. 00:06:44 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And even for scholars with explicit research and ethical commitments to language equity, the broader university context of sink or swim poses a very consistent challenge. 00:06:57 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So now do we see the? 00:06:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Next slide as. 00:06:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Well, the true test of. 00:07:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Screen share is whether it. 00:07:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Goes to the second slide. 00:07:08 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Do we see? 00:07:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez It right now. 00:07:11 That's fine, Sean. 00:07:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Oh, excellent. Thank you. So. 00:07:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Much so although this disconnect between kind of the larger context of the university and our specific research contexts is something that many of us share, the specific nature of that context is really going to be different depending on our individual research and teaching fields. And so I'd like to take a moment to serve in the group. 00:07:35 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To see the. 00:07:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Range of fields present today. 00:07:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So if you are able to connect to. 00:07:41 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Mentee. That would be. 00:07:42 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really helpful. Excellent. 00:07:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So as I'm seeing the responses coming in here, I see that many of you come from fields where mittens mission is really closely related to the core. 00:08:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of your academic field. 00:08:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Well, some of. 00:08:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez You, like me, are coming from people that are less directly focused on these issues and and particularly interested to hear about perhaps fields like organisational studies or professional communication. Some of the ways that these might that these issues may develop in your own. 00:08:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Fields, so leading the discussion I. 00:08:35 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really hope that we can get. 00:08:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Into some of the ways that these issues really. 00:08:40 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Differ from field to field. 00:08:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now I come to the issue of language equity in the classroom from two different academic disciplines. My research field of comparative literature and my current teaching field. 00:08:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of writing studies. 00:08:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So my academic training is in comparative literature and field that really prioritises thematic. 00:09:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Issues of migration and translation. 00:09:07 Dr Shawn Gonzalez My PhD research focused specifically on multilingual writers from the Caribbean who experiment with the boundaries between languages, and as a result, my research really centres on the assumption that creativity and knowledge production often occur in sites that are not neatly organised into monolingual blocks, however. 00:09:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Attention to artistic language diversity does not necessarily correspond to teaching practises that respond. 00:09:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To the needs of our multilingual study. 00:09:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Nancy Village argues that literary study increasingly, quote, makes room for non conventional practises of mixing, Englishes and other languages in readings generally associated with particular marginalised social identities, and sometimes this. 00:09:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Openness to language contact extends to student. 00:09:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Work, but usually only in the prewriting phases. 00:10:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Or in creative work. 00:10:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Lyash notes that instructors still demand modelling. 00:10:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Under written English as the only appropriate form for quote high quality writing. 00:10:16 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And Boyash goes on to describe the. 00:10:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really, the expectations of this monolingual writing ideology more fully, she says. According to this ideology, the aim of language and literacy instruction is translating, ostensibly fixed universal conventions and practises of reading and writing, with an evaluation of native like fluency. 00:10:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And correctness in reproducing these. 00:10:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In the name of preserving these ideals, any signs of difference or lack of conformity are treated as language deficits to be eradicated. 00:10:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Here, Boo. Ayush describes the dissonance I experienced earlier in my teaching practise between the comparative literature perspective on literary multilingualism and monolingual expectations for student writing. Those strict monolingual expectations were often framed as academic rigour. 00:11:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez This approach fundamentally contradicted the rigorous academic study of language contact that I was practising in my research. 00:11:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And when I was teaching comparative literature courses early in my PhD programme. 00:11:30 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I was often. 00:11:31 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Conscious of the gap that Boyash described. 00:11:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez But I found. 00:11:34 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Myself with very few tools to address it. I was a graduate student. I was always teaching or supporting courses with pre established assignments and rubrics. 00:11:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I found that there was relatively little discussion in my programme about how to work with students from. 00:11:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The reality of language background. 00:11:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There seemed to be an assumption that instructors were supposed to comment on grammar errors in student papers. Then the expectation was that students would avoiding those errors in future assignments. 00:12:06 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now those of you with the background and second language acquisition will of course see the impossibility of this project. 00:12:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Especially because as literature instructors, we had no formal training in language acquisition and nonetheless I. 00:12:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Found that many of my. 00:12:21 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Colleagues saw error correction as an important gatekeeping function and also as a service to their students. 00:12:29 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And this question of gatekeeping became even more prominent as I transitioned from teaching comparative literature classes, where I was often working with second or third or even 4th year students to teaching in a first year writing programme. 00:12:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I'm now talking two very different first year writing programmes, but both. 00:12:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of them consist of a. 00:12:49 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Single course that is required. 00:12:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Are all first year students in the university, regardless of their field of academic? 00:12:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Addressed in many ways this first year. 00:12:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Writing classroom has been a continuation. 00:13:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of some of. 00:13:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The same monolingual assumptions that I experienced in my training as a teacher of literature. 00:13:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, first year writing students are often bringing an even broader range of language variation and various academic experiences to these very first university level classrooms. 00:13:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And traditionally this natural variation has been seen as a problem to solve in the writing classroom. 00:13:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There's often the expectation from instructors in other parts of the university that writing programmes will resolve the problem of language variation so that instructors in other fields and at more advanced levels will not have to. 00:13:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Deal with it. 00:13:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I've seen this assumption from educators within reading programmes who believe that. 00:13:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Their critique of student grammar errors will somehow protect students from discrimination by future professors or employers later in their careers. I've also heard anecdotal reports of professors in other academic programme. 00:14:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Programmes complaining about increasing linguistic variety among students and framing this as. 00:14:16 Dr Shawn Gonzalez A failure either. 00:14:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of university admissions or of the 1st? 00:14:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Year writing programme or of some? 00:14:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Combination of the two. 00:14:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now know these. 00:14:28 Dr Shawn Gonzalez What these challenges exist? 00:14:29 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Throughout the university and many of them are going to be pretty similar regardless of our. 00:14:35 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Fields there are going. 00:14:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To be other challenges that are. 00:14:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really field specific and so. 00:14:39 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I'd like us to take. 00:14:40 Dr Shawn Gonzalez A moment now. 00:14:41 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To share what are some of the major challenges for effective multilingual pedagogy in your field? What are the things that are most urgent for you and your students, and I recognise. 00:14:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Just on who is the in the participant? Have you had a lot of undergraduate students here? And so I would really love to hear from the undergraduates as well from your perspective as students, what are you seeing as the real points of tension between multilingual research and student multilingualism in the classroom? 00:17:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez OK, this is. 00:17:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez All wonderful. I'm going to give you. 00:17:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Another minute if people are finishing something up that they want to enter in, but I want to take a. 00:17:11 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Moment to really. 00:17:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Emphasise this question of expectations. I'm seeing that. 00:17:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The issue of expectations, particularly native like expectations, is coming. 00:17:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Up a lot. 00:17:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez As well as this question misunderstanding. 00:17:28 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Basically, how do we how do we communicate both with our students and our colleagues? What are, what are the expectations for our students in terms of language proficiency? And my real question here is. 00:17:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez How do we? 00:17:44 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Deal with this. 00:17:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In the context of classes. 00:17:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That do not have language instruction as as their primary goal. How do we navigate these as faculty members who may or may not have advanced training in second language acquisition? 00:18:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I'm also seeing people bring up issues. 00:18:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of curriculum here and I think. 00:18:06 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I would love to dive into all of. 00:18:07 Dr Shawn Gonzalez This a little bit later in the. 00:18:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In the discussion, as we think about. 00:18:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez How we can? 00:18:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Navigate these issues from our particular positions in the university. 00:18:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So I am. 00:18:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez For now, I want to talk a little. 00:18:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Bit more about my. 00:18:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Shift from teaching literature to teaching writing, especially in terms of some of this scholarship that is coming out of writing studies that challenges the assumption that linguistic variety is a problem or that monolingual. 00:18:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Monolithic academic English right. These native like expectations that that is or should be our goal for our students. 00:18:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So I've learned a lot from scholars who are working at the intersection of writing pedagogy and applied linguistics, and people like Suresh kind of garaja, or Ofelia Garcia. And these scholars, along with others like Rashawn Ashanti Young, have convincingly argued. 00:19:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That linguistic variation is the norm in both student and professional writing. 00:19:18 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Furthermore, they argue. 00:19:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That recognising this variety leads to more equitable writing experiences for all students. 00:19:27 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now, much of this critical scholarship has coalesced around the term translingual, and I'm happy to get more into that later. 00:19:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Or and in many ways in my own research, I tend to continue prioritising the term multilingual, because I think it's important in many ways. 00:19:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And use terminology that is accessible to our student populations. 00:19:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez But regardless, according to Jerrilyn Lee, the true Translingual, questioning the ideology that contained. 00:20:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Which is from contact with each other, associating language mixing with contamination and lack of proficiency. And so in this context, with the idea of translingual, lism or translingual teaching approaches, offers is the challenge to engage with our students broad range of language practises without imposing an upper and middle class. 00:20:21 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In my case, us English speaker as the ideal writing voice. 00:20:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So this call for translingual approaches has been a really productive source of imagining creative approaches to teaching writing. Nevertheless, writing instructors who aim to incorporate trends legal approaches must navigate the broader institution, which tends to maintain a deficit perspective. 00:20:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez On student language. 00:20:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Whether implicitly or explicitly. 00:20:50 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And the specific nature of these constraints is getting very, really dramatically. 00:20:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Based on your academic. 00:20:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Field your institutional context and your career status. 00:21:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez But I'm sure that all of us here are working within systems that limit our abilities. 00:21:05 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To engage in. 00:21:06 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Some of the more radical aspirations of translingual pedagogy. 00:21:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So my question then is, how can instructors, particularly early career and contingent faculty in the year as well about postgraduate researchers and students who are still in their PhD programmes? How can we facilitate critical engagement with language within the space of our? 00:21:31 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Individual classrooms while still working within the broader programme wide curriculum. 00:21:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Or whatever systems. 00:21:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That we are navigating outside of our classrooms. 00:21:42 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So I want to offer one approach based on my experience teaching topics based research, writing in the Princeton writing programme. 00:21:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So when I first began. 00:21:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Teaching and a topics based seminar at Princeton. 00:21:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I was enthusiastic to. 00:22:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Use the course readings to support an equitable. 00:22:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Approach to language. 00:22:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So my course, which is entitled speaking American troublesome relationship between standard English and U.S. National identity. These are research questions that in my own practise are closely linked to destabilising a singular model of academic writing and to some extent I've seen the potential for more inclusive. 00:22:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Approaches to academic writing in my course. 00:22:28 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, I've also experienced the continued power of the ideal of Native American academic English, and what I'm working through now is how to really harness the harness. The possibilities of this topic in order to take. 00:22:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez My teaching further in this area. 00:22:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So when I first began teaching this. 00:22:50 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Course the topics. 00:22:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Seemed to be attracting students who really embrace a critical approach to American English. 00:22:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez At Princeton, students rank their preferred writing, seminar topics, and. 00:23:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Based with those set, they're matched with the seminar based on their choices. So as a result of this matching, my classes tend to be primarily comprised of international students and children of recent immigrants, many of whom have complex relationships to their fluency or lack thereof in their parents languages. 00:23:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I was really. 00:23:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Hopeful that these students would see potential Connexions between their own experiences with language and. 00:23:29 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The course reading. 00:23:31 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And in formal way, I consistently saw the students engaging critically with the ideal of monolingual expectations. They could really critique monolingual bias in the context. 00:23:42 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of our various research tasks. 00:23:44 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, I was troubled by the tendency of some of my students, especially international students. 00:23:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Who were not. 00:23:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Educated in English language high schools to repeatedly apologise to me for their failure to meet a. 00:23:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Perceived monolingual ideal. 00:24:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez These students often saw their level of English proficiency as kind of an insurmountable obstacle in terms of their performance as writers. 00:24:11 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I saw this tendency to self critique, especially in students written self reflections. So within my programme, for each formal written assignment, students have to write a short cover letter that they attach to the assignment, and instructors prompt students to use this letter to reflect on the successes of the paper. 00:24:30 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Areas for further development and continued question. 00:24:34 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now, from my perspective, the most useful part of these letters is that. 00:24:39 Dr Shawn Gonzalez They allow me to. 00:24:39 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Help provide feedback. 00:24:41 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To students in conversations with their own ideas about the project. 00:24:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, they've also over time emerged for me as an important source of evidence. Of all my students, perceptions of their own language proficiency. 00:24:55 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So I want to share with you. 00:24:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez An excerpt from all of these. 00:24:57 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There's that international student from China wrote in the cover letter for his final paper, he writes. I wish you to understand that for me, English is not something intuitive, slash inherent when it comes to thinking and drafting my thoughts in a way that is meaningful, logical, composed and balanced. 00:25:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That would be slow, clumsy, inaccurate, and always appears to be confused and out of the. 00:25:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now I don't know about all of you. 00:25:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez But this pretty much describes my mental state during like every meaningful writing project I've ever attempted. 00:25:32 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So from my perspective, I really see the student here. 00:25:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Engaged in the meaningful. 00:25:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Work of crafting a complex argument. 00:25:40 Dr Shawn Gonzalez That he's interpreting much about struggle. 00:25:43 Dr Shawn Gonzalez As a sign that his English abilities are. 00:25:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Packing. And so he continues working on the letter by expressing A wish that his writing will be considered worthy to stand among the work of his peers. 00:25:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And this is an issue that he regularly. 00:25:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Raised throughout the course. 00:25:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez You know clearly this is a student. 00:26:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Who possesses the necessary? 00:26:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Language proficiency to write an advanced academic argument. 00:26:05 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In English. 00:26:07 Dr Shawn Gonzalez At the same time, the student doesn't pass for any native speaker of American English in his writing for the student thoughts perceived as a serious problem, and in conversations with my colleagues, I found that this kind of self doubt related to language proficiency is a widespread phenomenon, and several of my colleagues. 00:26:27 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Have reported that their students often use the cover letter to apologise profusely for their language proficiency. 00:26:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And what's really striking to me is the the intensity of that self critique. Now the word of the cover letter is to. 00:26:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Prompt student reflection about the strengths and weaknesses of a particular product of writing and within the broader zoom population. 00:26:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The most difficult. 00:26:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Challenge is usually getting students to engage. 00:26:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez With the limitations of their project. 00:26:58 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I don't know if any of you have. 00:26:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Seen this in. 00:26:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Student self evaluation or I often see this kind. 00:27:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of thing in in class peer review. 00:27:06 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Where students will report really, superficially on the paper strengths and then underestimate its weaknesses with claims like oh, if I had more time, I would add more evidence, or I think I could continue to develop my structure. I have some questions about style. So in general, students are. 00:27:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The committee was under using the critical dimension. 00:27:30 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of the cover letter, but in. 00:27:32 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Trust we see. 00:27:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez This body of students who self critique not only the current project but really the overall level of English proficiency. 00:27:44 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So here's an example from another student who weather particularly scathing evaluation of his own production of a final podcast project. 00:27:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez He writes. I will start this letter by explaining the most challenging aspect of this particular assignment, listening to myself. 00:28:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez As someone who has taught himself English for the last five years, it was very unpleasant to hear my voice in that language. 00:28:08 Dr Shawn Gonzalez It made me. 00:28:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Feel aware of things like. 00:28:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez My accent or my pronunciation, even after recording the audio three times. 00:28:15 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I'm really sorry for that. 00:28:16 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, I would like to I have to would have to thank. 00:28:19 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The fact that there's a script. 00:28:20 Dr Shawn Gonzalez You can follow in case my pronunciation. 00:28:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Feels out of tune. 00:28:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez This looks has. 00:28:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Been really surprised me. Granted, it was an audio assignment, so it brings up particular questions about accent and pronunciation, but I think it reveals a broader sense of anxiety of the students inability to pass for native. 00:28:39 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And this anxiety about Accent was particularly surprising given the context of the students Research project. The student was a native Spanish speaker and was recording a presentation about London and Miranda's musical in the Heights in which he made some really interesting arguments about the relationship between Spanish and English in the. 00:28:59 OK. 00:29:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So in his academic. 00:29:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Work the student was clearly thinking critically about the language that when it came to his own voice, he was still holding himself to this kind of imaginary standard of unaccented native like speech. 00:29:16 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I'm really curious to hear here whether these kinds of student self evaluations resonate with what you. 00:29:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez See in your. 00:29:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Classes. Do your students report similar concerns or do they have other kinds of concerns? 00:29:43 We seem to have lost him momentarily. 00:29:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I am I. Can you still hear me and. 00:29:49 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Yes, I'm sorry. I'm. 00:29:50 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Just taking a sip of water. 00:29:54 Sorry, no, that's fine. 00:30:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez All right, so I am seeing a lot, a lot of people express similar concerns and a couple of responses where people say their students are expressing a different set of concerns about language proficiency. And as we move on in the presentation. 00:30:19 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I'm really curious to hear more about what those concerns are and how you as instructors respond to them. I'm curious if anyone who has students who have raised other concerns would be willing to share that with us briefly now. 00:30:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I'm going to be completely honest. I have no idea how to assess hand raising or anything like that in teams, so if you would like to share, please please. 00:30:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Shout it out. 00:30:51 Attendee If anyone would like to raise their hand, I should be able to nominate. 00:30:57 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Or if people would prefer to. 00:30:59 Prof Jo Angouri Use the the chat feed that would. 00:31:00 Prof Jo Angouri Be fine as well. 00:31:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Otherwise, we can hold this question for the end as well. Oh, I'm seeing Emily. 00:31:19 Attendee Hi yeah, I'm not a teacher and I don't have students, but I did notice a kind of trend with some. 00:31:25 Attendee My like multilingual friends where they would ask me to look over their work in English for them and kind of identify any errors and something that I often found was that their English was much better than the people who I knew who spoke English natively, but they had much less confidence over it. 00:31:45 Attendee Over their their speech and their grammar and their handwriting, even if it was actually at a higher standard and I just feel like that really feeds into. 00:31:52 Attendee The kind of anxiety complex of kind of feeling like you're out of place, in a sense, even if your ability is kind of of a similar standard. 00:32:03 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Emily. This is the thing that I see a lot and it can get really complicated for classroom dynamics when students who are perceived as monolingual native speakers of English. 00:32:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez All of a sudden. 00:32:18 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Become really an authority on academic writing because. 00:32:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Sort of expertise in academic writing is often blending in with sort of students own early language learning backgrounds, and I think this can get really really messy for. 00:32:38 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And both for students and for teachers, as they're really thinking about what kinds of language. 00:32:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Messages they're trying to send in the classroom. 00:32:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So with that, I think before maybe move on now, but I would like to really come back to this question later on and particularly to hear how. 00:33:02 Dr Shawn Gonzalez All of you respond when you see these. 00:33:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Coming up in your classrooms? 00:33:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So when I start seeing these kinds of student concerns, particularly when they're written in these really intense ways in the letter, I mean, this really troubles me. 00:33:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So, given the context of the course and the fact that every single reading in the course is questioning monolingualism. 00:33:30 Dr Shawn Gonzalez As an ideology of power. 00:33:32 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Students are still somehow receiving the message from the course that they're failing to write. 00:33:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Like monolingual speakers of English. 00:33:40 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now obviously most of this messaging is coming from outside of any of our individual classrooms. 00:33:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Students are in all kinds of academic and social interactions across the university that really shape their linguistic identities. However, I was also I I want to acknowledge the ways in which my course was also inadvertently amplifying these messages, in particular in terms of student perceptions of grades. 00:34:08 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now I recognise that all of these and all of these pieces around grades are really context specific, but in the writing programmes that I've worked in there are often standardised grading criteria and and these criteria often result in lower grades than students would receive in their other first year. 00:34:29 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Classes. So within our grading framework. 00:34:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Works. I often see a B level grade as a really significant accomplishment. Yet the grade that students are receiving in other. 00:34:42 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Parts of the university or whatever, they see their. 00:34:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Expectations for grades us. 00:34:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez They often disagree with me, and so for many. 00:34:50 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of them receiving AB level grade or particularly. 00:34:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez B minus or C plus level. 00:34:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Grade this signals are really poor performance from their perspectives. 00:35:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And what I really struggle with as an instructor is when students interpret their English proficiency as a source of failure in our classroom. 00:35:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now from the perspective. 00:35:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of translingual pedagogy or anti racist pedagogy. 00:35:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There are a lot of ways that this could be addressed, and personally I find this out in ways work on the labour based grading contracts really compelling and how we're to incorporate it in some limited ways and would love to incorporate it in more dramatic ways, but. 00:35:36 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Like many of us. 00:35:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I work within a programme that has standardised grading criteria, so the broader assessment practises are not something that I actually have very much control over. 00:35:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, even within these grading practises I find that many of my students are focusing on their language proficiency to an unproductive degree. 00:35:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So by focusing on this relatively slow process of advanced language development, students often miss the ways in which they're writing and argumentation. 00:36:08 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Skills are advancing. 00:36:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Dramatically over the course of a single semester. 00:36:12 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So my question now is, how do you harness these students experiences to validate their existing performance and to? 00:36:22 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Help them focus. 00:36:23 Dr Shawn Gonzalez On areas for improvement that really reinforce the the core aims of the course, which in this case is academic research and argumentation. 00:36:33 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So one potential response to this question emerged from considering the responses of another group of students who took a different approach to lower than expected grades. 00:36:44 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So one student wrote this after he. 00:36:45 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Received a B on a final paper. 00:36:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I was a little disappointed that I. 00:36:49 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Was unable to fully grasp. 00:36:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The complexity of my argument. 00:36:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And to focus. 00:36:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez On arguing one thing. 00:36:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez However, this is my first time doing a research project like this, so I'm pleased with my first stab at it. 00:37:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I see in the similar kind of resilience in this students response. So she received a C Plus on her final assignment and she writes it wasn't easy. 00:37:10 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I definitely had times where my writing wasn't as polished as I wanted it. 00:37:14 Dr Shawn Gonzalez To be overall or? 00:37:15 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I wanted it to. 00:37:16 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Be but overall I feel that. 00:37:18 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I've improved from the writer that I was. 00:37:19 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Six months ago. 00:37:21 Dr Shawn Gonzalez In high school, the. 00:37:21 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Longest paper I wrote was 5 pages so. 00:37:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez When I was tasked with. 00:37:24 Dr Shawn Gonzalez A 10 to 12 page paper. I felt well prepared. 00:37:28 Dr Shawn Gonzalez I've seen now that I was. 00:37:29 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Capable of writing such a. 00:37:30 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Paper. Had I been able to manage my time a little bit. 00:37:34 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Now when I compare these students with the two I've discussed earlier, I see some substantial distinctions. These students reflect on specific struggles relating to academic writing that can be directly addressed. 00:37:47 Dr Shawn Gonzalez While the potential. 00:37:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez For future growth is exciting. What's even more important from my perspective. 00:37:53 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Is what these reflections reveal about the students identities as writers. 00:37:57 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Both of them responded to grades that were lower than they had hoped, with a reassertion of their identities as competent writers who are prepared to meet future challenges. 00:38:07 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The first two. 00:38:08 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Students, on the other hand, expressed some real anxiety about the extent to which their English language level presents a stable barrier to their progress that writers as writers. 00:38:18 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So something that really puzzled me as I was thinking about these two groups of students was the difference in how they chose final paper topics. 00:38:27 Dr Shawn Gonzalez All four of these students chose final paper topics that were in some way related to their language backgrounds. However, the first two never directly explored their subject positions. 00:38:40 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The first two students are both considering artistic works that represent messy practises of multilingual negotiation across languages that they themselves speak, but they never address their relationship to those works. 00:38:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Student three and four, on the other hand, both pursued research projects that were very closely linked to their. 00:39:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Personal experiences. For example, the last student analysed the language policies of her own high school, located close to the US Mexico border. 00:39:09 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And it seemed like there might be a. 00:39:11 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Potential connexion here. 00:39:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So I became interested in designing some interventions that would prompt students to explore research topics that really drew on their own on their own language backgrounds. So I developed some short reflection activities that students could prepare as homework or. 00:39:32 Dr Shawn Gonzalez By counting the user participation component of the grade that we encourage them to think about their language backgrounds and start conversations about language learning proficiency. 00:39:46 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The reason which they encountered multiple languages. 00:39:48 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Is over the course of. 00:39:49 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Their lives and. 00:39:51 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really start these conversations outside of this place other than. 00:39:54 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Relation or outside of the? 00:39:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Place of them can be apologising. 00:39:59 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And honestly these. 00:40:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Tasks are still very much in progress. 00:40:04 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The initial impression is that students are responding positively to this opportunity to think about their language outside of an evaluative setting. 00:40:15 Dr Shawn Gonzalez But at the same time, I'm aware of how limited these interventions are in the scope of the broader messages students are receiving about standard English in the university context. So I remain optimistic about the the course topic as a potential entry point to questioning language. 00:40:34 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Turkey, however. 00:40:36 I think it's. 00:40:37 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Still really easy for all of this to be overshadowed, so I want to actually leave us with a with a quote from new Young Lou and Bruce Horner who are thinking about teaching and course design as a leader of revision. 00:40:52 Dr Shawn Gonzalez There and what I want to. 00:40:56 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Really. Ask you all is as we move into. 00:41:00 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The the more open discussion. 00:41:01 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Component here is whatever revisions that you all you have already made or want to make going forward and. 00:41:13 Dr Shawn Gonzalez And I'm really curious to hear more about how these things differ based on. 00:41:17 Dr Shawn Gonzalez The field and. 00:41:18 Dr Shawn Gonzalez One of the things that we can kind of share across fields as people who have a a shared interest in these kinds. 00:41:25 Dr Shawn Gonzalez Of topics. 00:41:26 Dr Shawn Gonzalez So with that, thank you for your time so far. And I'm really curious to hear. 00:41:31 Dr Shawn Gonzalez More from all of you.