FIRST-YEAR WRITING ~ FYW for MULTILINGUAL WRITERS
Over the years, I have taught First-Year Writing through nearly a dozen different thematic frameworks. More recently I redesigned the course to support multilingual writers, many of them students from immigrant communities or international students. The course framing of “Global English” for multilingual writers provides a way of understanding writing, literacy and identity through what educational scholars identify as an asset-based lens––one that foregrounds the cognitive, social, and cultural advantages of multilingualism. The research topics that emerged from that course have provided a meaningful and engaging approach for teaching writing for any section of FYW, since so many of our students have grown up immersed in two languages, and often more. For several of the topics that students research and write about, we have the benefit of superbly engaging educational videos from the PBS series, “Otherwords,” hosted by sociolinguistics professor, Erica Brozovsky (here’s a sample).
The paragraphs below are drawn from the Course Description
Thematic Framework: In this section of First-Year Writing our course materials focus on research topics related to the broad issue of Global English––or perhaps more accurately, Global Englishes, since the language has evolved into hundreds of linguistic varieties. Regional Englishes have been shaped by the forces of colonialism, global capitalism, and the communicative needs of marginalized communities. The dominance of English globally as the most common language used for commerce, diplomacy, research, and education is a consequence of centuries of colonial domination, including ongoing neocolonial practices. English language instruction has become a mandatory part of national school curricula in over 70% of countries, and the global reach of US popular culture and consumer products has further strengthened that influence. Globally, many students beginning at a very young age have developed skills as multilingual thinkers and writers. And researchers continue to make new discoveries about the many cognitive, social, and educational benefits of being bilingual.
That expansion has not been without its costs, however: the increasing importance of English inevitably pushes other languages into the margins of human interaction. The result is that thousands of indigenous languages have become formally endangered as the numbers of native speakers continue to dwindle. These topics are ones that been have researched and written about by students in previous semesters of this course. This semester we will begin by reading and writing about bilingualism in relation to cognitive development and health across the lifespan. During the second course unit you will research and develop your skills of argumentation by studying indigenous languages around the world that have become endangered or severely marginalized. The course will conclude by inviting you to develop new research topics in Global English that will be integrated into future sections of this course.