Multilingual Academic Literacies

Abstract

As the population of Higher Education (HE) becomes decidedly more multilingual, HE instructors struggle with how to address the Englishes produced in high stakes academic writing. In this paper, we endeavor to unveil a practice-based understanding of how multilinguals can be pedagogically supported in their production of texts in a space in-between first and second language by revisiting an earlier HE based study through the lens of a study in an early education context. We begin by reconceptualizing the possibilities for multilingual academic literacies through code meshing. Due to the high stakes and conventionally rigid nature of HE writing practices, we turn our attention to a lower stakes educational environment where pedagogical practice is more flexible and examine how code meshing is supported through six key pedagogical strategies in a 1st grade classroom. Our aim is to explicitly bring code meshing practices in early education classrooms to the attention of researchers and practitioners in higher education, in order to illustrate a pedagogic model which is of direct relevance to higher education. Finally, we reconsider a failed HE multilingual literacy experience by applying the six pedagogic strategies to show the value of code meshing in answering the conflicts faced by HE writers.