Teaching English in a Multilingual Context: translanguaging, policy and assessment bias
What this specialism tests
The Multilingual Context option asks how you treat the languages and literacies learners already have - as a planned resource, or as interference to be banned. It also tests awareness of policy, identity, prior schooling and the assessment bias that follows when a test assumes a single cultural and linguistic background.
Core rules and concepts
- Plurilingual competence. The CEFR treats a learner's languages as one repertoire; using the first language to plan, clarify or build schemata is a strategy, not a failure.
- Translanguaging. Planned, purposeful movement between languages (García and Wei) works best when the task decides the language: L1 for brainstorming and concept checking, English for the performance itself.
- English as a lingua franca. Jenkins and Seidlhofer show that intelligibility, not native-speaker accuracy, may be a legitimate goal - but justify it for your context rather than applying it universally.
- World Englishes. Kachru's concentric circles remind you that 'standard English' is a political as well as a linguistic choice; state which model your assessment rewards.
- Prior schooling and literacy. Interrupted education, unfamiliar scripts and different classroom cultures change what can be assumed; contrastive awareness of learners' L1s predicts transfer errors.
- Language policy. State the classroom policy - when L1 is allowed, for what, and why - and make it visible in the scheme of work.
- Assessment. Reduce construct-irrelevant difficulty: visual support, glossaries, clear rubrics, and no penalty for L1-influenced pronunciation unless pronunciation is the construct.
Worked example
Twenty-two adult migrants in a community college class, nine L1s (including Arabic, Tigrinya, Dari, Polish and Spanish), mixed prior schooling, English as the shared classroom language. A bilingual glossary is co-built for each topic; the first ten minutes of a writing lesson are spent planning in L1 pairs, with English used for the draft and the feedback. Assessment includes a speaking task with picture prompts and a reading task whose cultural content is checked against the group's experience; rubrics separate communicative success from accuracy. The evaluation notes that the L1 planning phase increased the quantity and complexity of the English drafts.
Traps that cost marks
- A deficit framing of L1 ('they keep slipping back into...').
- A blanket English-only policy with no justification.
- Assuming a shared L1 or a shared culture.
- Extending ELF arguments to an exam class whose certificate demands standard norms.
- Culturally loaded texts and rubrics that test background knowledge rather than language.