Multilingual writer

A multilingual writer is a person who has the ability to write in two or more languages, or in more than one dialect of a language. Depending on the situation and the environment, these writers are often identified with many labels, such as second-language writers, non-native speakers, language learners, and many others. In Life as a Bilingual by François Grosjean, it is mentioned that approximately 50% to 70% of the world’s population is bilingual.

Multilingual writers have the ability to be more aware of many aspects of their writing process and their final product. In addition, the domain of two or more languages and dialects allows these writers to have unique rhetorical perspectives and a remarkable ability to perform the skills at hand. Multilingual writers are often discouraged because they are held to native-speaker or monolingual standards, and most educational systems end up discouraging multilingual literacy.

Multilingual literacy programs

Around the world, educational institutions are creating programs to encourage multilingual literacy and give tools and support to multilingual writers. For example, in the United States, The Norman E. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center at Dickinson College is an ongoing program that benefits multilingual students by giving them a space where their abilities are appreciated and they are given tools that help their learning process as well as the knowledge they put out to the world.

Translingualism in multilingual writing

Translingualism is an intellectual movement that contributes to the pedagogy and philosophy of writing. This applies to multilingual writers who utilize various linguistic features in speaking and writing. There is a relationship with the process of code-meshing in writing, leading to the development of unique writing identities for many multilingual individuals.

Teachers can be open to understanding the different linguistic variations that their students may use and how they can be applied to different scenarios in writing when applicable. As there are different modes of linguistic variation in communication, different levels of usage are involved.

Pedagogy in multilingual writing  

Teachers are looking into the student writer's identity regarding academic writing and different academic expectations. They discovered that there is a demand for more care and attention to the use of language in teaching. Writing is not simply about building the “basics” of academic writing taught in middle and high school.

A study done by George Mason University showed that multilingual students felt a great change in their writing identities when they changed their languages to English. Students desire more guidance in the learning process of writing academically and developing academic writing proficiency.

Students who write in their native language connect to their culture which provides them with a more “rich” and descriptive writing experience than when they wrote in English. This finding entailed that students felt limited in their writing in the English language.

As a result, students would like to learn how to use their native language’s voice more in writing in English. Teachers can support this desire by being open to student suggestions and learning their writing styles, ideas, and categories to understand the diverse language and writing methods students need to succeed in writing in English.

Multilingual teachers in writing

It isn’t only students who go through the exploration of writing and shaping their writer's identity; teachers do too. Some teachers are also multilingual and are searching for their writing identity as well.

Research by Dorthy Worden Chambers and Analeigh E. Horton found that there is an increasing diversity in the population of current and future teachers of writing. This is beneficial for students but it is also necessary to put in time and care to develop the teacher's identity. A literacy narrative project is an assignment for teachers to develop their identity, to learn and improve their language and literacy skills to know the discussions of “standard” language ideologies. Teachers create new identities and foster new teaching strategies through their learning process and use them to cater to their students’ identities in multi-literacy, “multilingual, and multi-competent identities.”

The main takeaway from this research is that there are limitations to teachers relying on “traditional” teaching ideas. The limitations are more prominent in participant Lee’s findings where teachers deal with constraints trying to develop their desired identities in their workplace. It is important to allow teachers more time to explore and learn about language and literacy and ideologies that create language “stereotypes” to discover their own identities. They then create a teaching style that values their students’ multicultural and linguistic identities in writing.

Writer identity for multilingual writers

For Multilingual Writers, developing a writer's identity requires time and an adequate environment to develop. Being in a learning environment that fosters one’s writing identity can be impactful for multilingual students.

An academic study done by Barbara Bird, Dough Downs, Moriah McCraken, and Jan Reiman from “Next Steps: New Directions for/ in Writing about Writing” looks into the study of how the Writing Studies 101 course and “Bridging program” classes help positively impact students' search for their voice and expand their writing knowledge.

The study the scholars carried out was a “case-based reflection” on students who are English language learners trying to find their writing identity in “Writing Studies 101: Exploring Writing, a first-year, contract- and portfolio-graded workshop course at the University of Alberta”. They studied students' reflections and referenced them in their articles as evidence.

The scholars found that these classes aid multilingual students in rediscovering their voices and learning to incorporate their mother language into their brainstorming and writing. They also discovered that for students who liberate their speaking voice, their writing voices would come after and this is seen with students sharing their ideas through talking and writing. Through reading a diverse variety of literature, students in the class could also gain inspiration in shaping their identity by trying to apply other people's writing styles to their works. This process would then allow students to find their style of writing over time.

Another realization for the scholars is incorporating different writing activities for students to allow them to further their writing identity: They specifically mentioned that “low-stakes generative writing” which includes freewriting, copious writing, etc., can improve fluency, and the focus and understanding of difficult texts.

The “WRS 101” class’ use of generative writing and integrating feedback strategies helps multilingual students discover newly founded identities that do not exclude their other identities. This class helps guide students out of linguistic deprivation and instead allows them to be more engaged in learning their writing journey and express their own writing styles. It also improves self-efficacy.

Challenges multilingual writers' experience in writing

Some challenges that student face when switching their first language (L1) to their second language (L2) happen during their transition from first language (L1) written classes to second language (L2) written classes and any challenges that arise within this scope.

In the Journal of Second Language Writing by Diane Belcher and Alan Hirvela, they looked into the various identities of multilingual writers transitioning from L1 writing class to L2 classes and we realized that Therethere There is often not enough attention put into understanding students' experiences in transitioning their writing “voices” from the “L1” to “L2” writing classes.

Research from Diane Belcher and Alan Hirvela illustrates that the definition of a writer's voice comes with challenges with a lack of research on how voice may be taught to the students. More effort needs to be put into understanding the writers' identities and their conception of what writing is through their voices.

Three case studies were implemented on three Latin American graduate writing students with the focus on voice as an “analytical” tool to learn about the struggles of the students transitioning from one writing class “L1” to another “L2”. Essentially, the experience of multilingual writers is affected by the breakdown use of “voice”; a usual marker that relates to identity and self-characterization.

Scholars discovered that there is not enough attention put into understanding the students’ experiences in the “L1” writing class and their transition goals into developing a “voice” in the “L2” class.

Research is important and necessary to face the definition of the voice of a writer which comes with challenges to gain a greater understanding of the voices and identities of multilingual writers that already exist. More research is needed to look into how voice may be taught to the students and put more effort into understanding the identities of the writers and their conception of what writing is through their voice.

List of multilingual writers

• W. E. B. Du Bois American-Ghanaian sociologist and activist.
• Kahlil Gibran Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer.
• Xiaolu Guo. Chinese-British novelist and film director.
• Guillermo del Toro. Mexican filmmaker and author.
• Junot Díaz Dominican-American writer, academic, and editor.
• Ariel Dorfman. Argentine-Chilean writer and human rights activist.
• Eva Hoffman. Polish-American writer and academic.
• Kazuo Ishiguro. Japanese-British novelist.
• Jack Kerouac. American writer.
• Jhumpa Lahiri. American author.
• Vladimir Nabokov Russian-American novelist.

Further reading

1. Brinkschulte, M., E. Grieshammer, and M. E. Stoian. “Translingual Academic Writing at Internationalised Universities: Learning From Scholars”. Journal of Academic Writing, vol. 8, no. 2, Nov. 2018, pp. 150–6, doi:10.18552/joaw.v8i2.460.