Beyond Deficit Thinking: Strategies for Engaging Linguistic Difference in the Multilingual Classroom

The presence of multilingual students and speakers of non-privileged varieties of English in our classrooms foregrounds linguistic difference as a key feature of university learning environments. Nevertheless, these students still face marginalization as their multilingual and multidialectal competencies are rendered invisible and inoperative in academic learning. Recent translingual approaches offer a new framework to rethink difference as constitutive of all communicative practices rather than as a feature of students’ diverse sociolinguistic identities. In this session, we will discuss practical strategies on how to engage our students’ linguistic multicompetencies in ways that may align our pedagogical practices with more expansive understandings of linguistic competence and academic literacy.

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Paola Bohórquez
University of Toronto
English Language Learning Program

Thu, Oct 10, 2019
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin