Mercè Pujol-Ferran, Jacqueline M. DiSanto, Nelsón Núñez Rodríguez, and Angel Morales, Hostos Community College-CUNY, Bronx, New York, USA

In an effort to help students raise their academic confidence, stay enrolled, and learn the content of their courses in English, we, four bilingual professors, investigate plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum, in science, humanities, education, and linguistics courses. Our four case studies illustrate how we utilize our repertoire of linguistic resources in two or more languages to teach in flexible ways and tap into students’ unique linguistic and cultural pluralities (Cummins, 2007; García & Sylvan, 2011) in multilingual classrooms. Plurilingual pedagogies (Cummins, 2009; García with Flores, 2012) embrace students’and faculty’s dominant and less dominant languages with all their linguistic skills and competencies. They consist of translanguaging (Creese and Blackledge, 2010; García, 2009; Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012) or translingual practices (Canagarajah, 2013), which incorporate the dynamic mixing of languages in various pedagogical contexts; these practices reflect the hybrid ways in which bilinguals often use their languages interactively. Students can read a passage in one language and write about it in another. They may use bilingual dictionaries to master vocabulary in two languages, or they may converse in their dominant languages or code-switch from one language to another when learning.

In the college, our plurilingual pedagogies co-exist with English-only instruction. This combined practice may benefit students’ learning. Students do well in our courses (See Table I in Pujol-Ferran et al., 2016), and this raises their motivation to stay enrolled. They can easily transfer information learned from one language to the other (Cummins, 1979, 1991; García with Flores, 2012). English monolinguals also benefit from plurilingual instruction; they can share their knowledge of English and appreciate bilinguals’ linguistic diversity. For us, our interdisciplinary collaboration provides a forum of support and inquiry. It validates our own linguistic repertoires and challenges us to investigate innovative teaching methodologies (Pujol-Ferran et al., 2016).

The plurilingual pedagogies we examine collectively are translation, code-switching, cross-linguistic analysis, and the use of students’ dominant languages to engage them in course material and help them complete assignments. Below we present our plurilingual practices in four case studies.

Teaching Chemistry Using Students’ Personal and Cultural Narratives (Núñez-Rodríguez)

I have taught Chemistry and Biology in Cuba, Argentina and the United States in English and Spanish for more than 20 years. I currently teach Chemistry for Science majors in English to college students who are mostly dominant in Spanish, Asian, and African languages. I use this classroom diversity as an opportunity to foster academic English and another language, the scientific one, which ultimately is a new language for my students.

I take advantage of students’ life experiences in another culture and their literacy skills in their dominant language to build discipline academic literacy in English. Students share personal narratives related to the course topics and work in small groups, speaking French, Chinese, Spanish, or English. I capitalize on students’ different realities and use plurilingual pedagogies in the classroom to build course content. In fact, many concepts in Chemistry can be explained based on cooking and nutrition habits. Students examine their daily eating habits, frequently related to their culture in their own narratives using their dominant language. Words like frito and frit (Spanish and French terms for fried), plátanos maduros (Spanish term for ripe banana), sancocho (Spanish term for typical Dominican stew), calor and chaleur (Spanish and French terms for heat) are shared. These conversations lead to defining homogenous or heterogeneous mixture in Chemistry, or the amount of energy (Thermochemistry) involved in a chemical reaction and its proportions. Subsequently, I introduce appropriate scientific terminology and definitions such as Enthalpy, Entropy, Joule, composition, or reaction in English. Thus, students understand concepts without the potential barrier of discussing initial Chemistry terminology in English. Overall, letting students tell narratives and translate concepts in their dominant languages creates a valuable learning atmosphere and an equal opportunity for all my students to learn Chemistry, regardless of their level of academic English.

Mixing Students’ Dominant and Less Dominant Languages in a College Drama Course (Morales)

As a bilingual professor (Spanish/English), I have found that one powerful way for English Language Learners (ELLs) to improve their English is through acting in the classroom. In the course, Acting I, ELLs and English dominant students are given scenes from world literature, mainly in Spanish and English, to rehearse and perform. I constantly use theater games and exercises to engage them through role-playing, improvisations, simulations, storytelling, and movement.

Students learn scripts and plays in the language these are written. They translate words, explore meanings in depth, respond verbally in more than one language and physically through body language and movement. When students perform, they act, and by acting, their experience reflects their cultural identity.

Translation (Cummins, 2008) and code-switching (García with Flores, 2012) are effective plurilingual pedagogies in the course. Translation happens explicitly or implicitly; students translate a scene from one language into another and perform it in many languages, depending on the students’ dominant languages (explicit). A character can pose a question, in Spanish, for instance, and another character can respond in English (implicit). The students who do not speak Spanish in the class can figure out the question by listening to the answer in English. Code-switching occurs in bilingual classrooms (Zentella, 1981)when students alternate between two languages. The following improvised script illustrates code-switching and implicit translation:

A: Where did you go last night?

B. Fuí al cine.

A: To the movies? What movie did you see?

B: Harry Potter. It was great! Me gustó mucho.

Rehearsing roles in more than one language makes students feel less apprehensive since roles give them a degree of safety; ELLs are not afraid of making mistakes in English (Bolton, 1985) and gain confidence in themselves and in their English competencies.

Combining Plurilingual Pedagogies and Learning Styles in an Education Course (DiSanto)

As a former Spanish teacher now working with pre-service teachers, I feel comfortable combining students’ perceptual modalities of learning (Dunn, 2003) with students’ dominant and less dominant languages in a Foundations of Education course. Translanguaging is a valid pedagogical practice for my students as they master course content with enthusiasm and confidence.

First, I encourage students to dissect key vocabulary words into prefixes and suffixes, and identify cognates by translating them. An example is defining terms like development and proximal in a lesson on cognitive growth in young children. Students draw comparisons to cognate words in their dominant languages (développement and prochaine in French, desarrollo and próximo in Spanish). They also break them into recognizable root words in English such as develop-ment, develop-mental, un-develop, proxim-al, proxim-ity, or ap-proxim-ate. This instructional proactice is effective and has a lasting effect in students’ memory. Interestingly, the most applicable translation for development in Bengali is kramabrd'dhi, which translates more closely to increment--a very appropriate term in child development. Students can work in their preferred sociological structure (Honigsfeld and Dove, 2010): in pairs, within a small group, or with me as a facilitator.

Second, I allow students to use their dominant languages to complete assignments in English. Students must write a research paper on a current issue in education. Within their preferred sociological grouping, they take notes, summarize articles, translate vocabulary, or even write their first drafts in their dominant languages. Although the final version must be in English, students must submit all their previous notes and drafts. They develop confidence in their ability to write in English by drawing on their dominant languages, translation equivalents, and each other’s English-language skills. Plurilingual pedagogies are powerful because they fully engage students in the course and stimulate them to master content well.

Engaging Students in Cross-Linguistic Analysis in a Comparative Linguistics Course (Pujol-Ferran)

I have taught ESL and Linguistics in the college for more than two decades, and translanguaging has been an active practice in my education and my teaching. I am a plurilingual speaker of Catalan, Spanish, French, and English.

The bilingual pedagogy that I present highlights cross-linguistic analysis in a Comparative Linguistics (English and Spanish) course. Students are bilingual and benefit from each others’ different degrees of proficiencies. They compare and contrast the sounds, grammar and structures, and vocabulary in English and Spanish, always presented in meaningful texts. Students discuss similarities and differences they encounter and reflect on instances of positive transfer or interference in their interactions and written work. For instance, I recently presented the theme, The Bilingual Advantage; students shared what they knew about the topic in either language and read two articles (Kinzler, 2016; Sáez, 2015), one in each language. Then, I introduced the lesson’s focus, Spanish and English Adjectives, by presenting two excerpts (see a couple of sentences below), one from each article. Students were asked to circle the adjectives and discuss similarities and differences in small groups.

…Bilingual children enjoy certain cognitive benefits such as improved executive function... (Kinzler, 2016)

…Los adultos bilingües tenían más sustancia gris en las regiones implicadas en el control ejecutivo del cerebro… (Sáez, 2015)

Students quickly encountered some differences. Adjectives in English are invariable (in form) and are placed before the noun ( e.g: bilingual children, cognitive benefits); in Spanish, however, they agree in gender and number with the noun and go after (e.g: el control ejecutivo, las regiones implicadas). A dominant Spanish speaker eagerly reflected, “ ‘Nosostros somos personas bilingües’, but if I translate this, tengo que poner atención; pues I can’t say, ‘we are bilingualS people.’ Verdad, profe?”

Cross-linguistic analysis is an effective bilingual pedagogy that uses translanguaging to enhance students’ metalinguistic awareness and biliteracy.

Conclusion

Our case studies explored four plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum: translation, code-switching, cross-linguistic analysis, and the use of students’ dominant languages to complete assignments in English. Minority students in our college, especially Latinos, who are at high risk of dropping out, do well in our courses (See Table I in Pujol-Ferran et al, 2016). Plurilingual pedagogies embraced students’ full linguistic repertoires, enabling them to reason and express themselves in their dominant languages; created a safe and collaborative learning environment to share cultural experiences and examine content vocabulary and translation in various languages; and enhanced students’ meta-linguistic and bilingual skills by reflecting on instances of positive transfer and interference.

We believe that our instructional practices increased students’ confidence, made academic content and language accessible to students, and encouraged them to stay enrolled. Additionally, our interdisciplinary collaboration validated our own bilingual and plurilingual skills and provided a supportive environment for research.

Certainly, more studies are needed to evaluate plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum, but we hope that our work can shed light on effective, flexible and innovative ways to teach language and content to minority students in multilingual classrooms.

Note:This article is an abridged version of a lengthier one we published in 2016 (Pujol-Ferran, M., DiSanto., J., Núñez-Rodríguez, N., & Morales, A. (2016). Exploring plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 72 (4), 530-549.), but the examples we present now are all new.

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Jacqueline M. DiSanto, Ed.D. is Associate Professor and Unit Coordinator of Teacher Education. She is the deputy chair for the board of trustees of the New York City Montessori Charter School; her areas of specialty are curriculum, faculty development, and online teaching and learning. She earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree at New York University in Business Education, a Professional Diploma at Fordham University in Administration and Supervision, and an Ed.D. at St. John’s University in Instructional Leadership.

Nelson Núñez Rodríguez is Professor of Chemistry, Unit Coordinator at Natural Science Department, and former Director of Center for Teaching and Learning at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. He currently serves as Fulbright Specialist on STEM Education and sub award Principal Investigator for a NIH IRACDA program. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Havana University, Cuba in 1992, a Ph.D. in Chemistry from National University of Cordoba, Argentina in 2001 and developed a four year-postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.

Ángel Morales is a professor of Theatre at Hostos Community College, and the Artistic Director of the award winning Hostos Repertory Company for which he has directed numerous productions. He is currently a doctoral student at NYU researching the topic of English Language Learners and the Art of Acting. His highest degree earned is an M.A. in Educational Theatre from NYU. Professor Morales can be contacted at: amorales@hostos.cuny.edu​