Four changes to help improve multilingual students’ writing

Across the globe, universities are cutting academic writing instruction and support staff from their strained budgets. At the same time, questions are being raised by faculty about students’ increasing reliance on AI. Students studying in a language that is not their mother tongue, without any previous instruction in academic writing, are particularly vulnerable to communication struggles and diminished well-being – and therefore more likely to be tempted to let AI do the work for them.

Often, faculty do not see themselves as writing instructors, but they’re concerned about how students complete writing assignments for their courses. Based on my experience as a teacher and researcher in academic writing, here I’ll offer suggestions for making shifts in instruction to meet these challenges.

1. Recognise students’ multilingual backgrounds

Often, professors consider students’ multiple language backgrounds as a problem that can interfere with communication in the language of instruction. They want students to forget them when they walk in the door and instead “think in” the language of the classroom. Professors who are also multilingual might have been pressured to do the same in order to achieve academic and social success.

• Encourage, don’t shame: rethinking writing feedback
• How to talk to students about their writing
• What virtual reality and AI can do for language learners

This approach not only denies the potential for students to draw on what they know about multiple languages as a resource, it denies a fundamental part of their identity. It can lead to demotivation, anxiety, a loss of a sense of self – or all three. As one of my students noted, just being able to say in English that he is a multilingual student, with a sense of pride in his voice, empowered him to write in language that is not as natural for him.

2. Make expectations for the structure and evaluation of assignments explicit

Writing is more than just sitting down and typing. Every written text has an audience, a purpose and a structure. A laboratory report describing a physics experiment will be different from a psychological profile or a historical counterfactual.

Even a research article can have different practices for outline and citation depending on whether it is in the humanities, the social sciences or the hard sciences. What seems obvious to a professor might be unseen by a student, without looking at models and being shown what the different important elements are and why they are important.

3. Consider process, not just product

Students might need help, for example, knowing how to find and evaluate sources for writing a research paper. They might need to be told directly that it’s OK to write the introduction after the conclusion, or to go back and read and revise text, rather than simply drafting once and submitting.

Process-oriented activities can be integrated into the course design by inviting subject librarians to facilitate source searches. It can also be part of the course assessment process where students submit draft and revised versions of their assignments for different parts of their final grade.

An additional graded assignment can be asking students to write a reflection about their process of completing an assignment: what challenges did they have? What went well? What lessons can they take into the next task?

4. Decide and communicate what your role and your students’ role will be in copy-editing

Some professors are more comfortable providing feedback on formal aspects of writing than others. If you are comfortable, let your students know that you will be looking at things such as syntax, grammar, punctuation and citation and the extent to which corrections will impact their grade (hopefully a smaller weighted portion than content). If not, suggest resources or prompts for using electronic resources such as ChatGPT or Grammarly or spellcheck in Microsoft, while also pointing out the limitations of those sources.

These are general suggestions and approaches; specific approaches to assigning and evaluating written tasks will depend on the subject, the professor, the students and the flexibility of the syllabus. The key takeaway is to take time as you prepare to teach a course, to reflect on what you are asking students to do, and to build students up for academic success.

Bridget Goodman is associate professor at Nazarbayev Graduate School of Education.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.