Responding to Multilingual Students’ Writing

Have realistic expectations about what students should be able to master from draft to draft or over the course of a semester and keep in mind that it could be unfair for some students to have a teacher who is lenient and forgiving with grammatical issues while others have a teacher who heavily penalizes them for what is seen as incorrect usage. 

Be clear about what you want your students to accomplish on a given assignment, since there are many concerns on which a student could focus when writing.

Understand that many students, including multilingual and first-generation college students, deeply value when teachers give them specific guidance about sentence-level concerns, both in written feedback and in-class instruction and discussion. Overall, research suggests that most multilingual writers can benefit from error correction, which is sometimes referred to as corrective feedback. Additionally, corrective feedback generally helps multilingual writers make better revisions. Too much of a hands-off approach might be a disservice to these students and result in missed opportunities to serve their linguistic demands.

Show what you value, other than grammatical correctness, about a student’s work and contributions to the class. Academic writing is a complex process, and grammar is only a part of it.

Be aware of different academic and cultural norms to which multilingual writers may have been previously exposed, including writing conventions in other disciplines; some errors could stem from these differences, which is another reason to be clear about your expectations.

Try to provide feedback that helps the writer improve without denying their agency and voice.

Aim for student autonomy: instructors should help multilingual writers develop strategies that will allow them to identify and revise their own errors. By helping novice writers develop self-monitoring and metacognitive skills, instructors are ultimately helping these writers become more independent and confident.

Distinguish between legitimate errors and features that are a part of the writer’s individual style. Language errors can be defined as “morphological, syntactic, and lexical forms that deviate from rules of the target language, violating the expectations” (Ferris 3). The line between error and style can be especially blurred when working with multilingual writers and users of non-native or non-standard Englishes.

Try not to overemphasize personal “pet peeves” and minor grammatical “errors” that don’t significantly affect a reader’s comprehension.

Consider teaching not just grammatical concepts but also grammatical “controversies”–as Shawna Shapiro (2022, Chapter 5) calls the commonplace disagreements about correctness that occur even between so-called “experts”–in order to show students that a language is not a monolithic, agreed-upon entity.

Give direct and explicit feedback for errors that students cannot yet identify or correct on their own and more indirect feedback for errors that students are likely to overlook but can correct once their attention is drawn to these issues. Specifically, direct feedback may be best suited for errors that are due to lack of knowledge (e.g., inappropriate preposition or word choice), while indirect feedback may be best for errors that are due to inattentiveness (e.g., verb tense error).

Point out both global issues (such as strength of argumentation or overall organization) and local issues (such as sentence-level or word-level problems). Some process writing advocates suggest focusing on global issues in early drafts and on more local concerns in later drafts. However, when local issues impede comprehension, these may also need to be selectively discussed in earlier drafts.

With less proficient writers, explicitly label types of errors–either through detailed labels or a clear coding system (make sure to explain it to the students!)–while with more proficient writers, simply underline the errors, as experienced multilingual writers can often identify error types and correct them on their own.

Point out major error patterns in students’ writing and guide them in revising or avoiding these errors on future drafts and throughout the course of the semester.

Teach and model revising and proofreading strategies, as writers may not be familiar with or skilled at identifying or responding to errors in their own writing.

Avoid using an idiosyncratic system of abbreviations to give specific sentence-level written feedback on students’ writing. If your goal is to make sure that students understand your comments, try writing your comments in clear and understandable prose.

Instead of labeling a passage “awkward,” try to pinpoint what might cause or contribute to the awkwardness. Was it word choice, modification, parallelism, or some combination of factors?

Identify a select number of grammatical priorities to teach and to emphasize in feedback and evaluation. Such prioritization can help avoid overwhelming the writer (and the instructor) and help the writer notice patterns in their errors. Remember to teach the controversies that accompany various grammatical concepts, but in general, prioritize concepts that are

• easier for students to master (because they have clear rules students can study and learn), and/or 
• more likely to impede comprehension, especially if very frequent and closely connected to prior course content and to the current assignment, and/or 
• the most serious violations of linguistic, sociolinguistic, or academic norms

Pair written feedback with oral feedback and conferences to help multilingual writers interpret your comments and to guide them in making revisions.

Consider discussing grammatical issues in class, which normalizes an attention to these important sentence-level concepts and gives students the opportunity to ask questions and address concerns. Looking at (anonymized) excerpts from student papers can be an especially good way to spark conversation and to help students learn to diagnose and correct targeted problems–and to discuss ambiguities and potentially critique the norms of academic language usage.

Refer to these guidelines for additional tips on supporting multilingual writers.