Amplifying Multilingual Learners’ Voice: Why It Matters In Teaching and Learning

Centering student voice in teaching and learning is key for student learning. When students see their ideas represented during instruction, they feel empowered and engaged. It also helps them make connections between prior learning and new content. For multilingual learners who may come with different experiences and backgrounds, their voices bring into instruction new ways of understanding the world that extend learning for everyone in the classroom.  Despite these benefits, attempting to bring in multilingual learners’ voices can be challenging when they do not yet have the language to share those ideas.  

For multilingual learners who are still in the process of learning the language of your classroom, here are some ideas you can use to elicit their thinking in ways that are productive: 

• Help them prepare. All students benefit from time to think before having to share. For multilingual learners, they also need time to think about language. Structures like turn-and-talk provide opportunities to rehearse language before participating in large group discussions. Using think-time and turn-and-talk’s along with language supports can help students prepare to share their thinking. 

• Ask questions. Ask open-ended questions to elicit ideas rather than questions that elicit single-word answers. These questions help students dig deeper into the content and expand their language skills. And asking follow-up questions provides opportunities for students to dig even deeper! As you formulate questions, think about how you might adapt them to make sure students understand them.  

• Focus on ideas while supporting the language. As students share ideas, be curious about them and don’t get distracted by focusing on the “correct” language—there will be time for that later! If you focus on language first, there may not be concepts yet to connect to the new language. However, if you develop the concepts first, the concepts will demand new, more nuanced, and specific language.  

• Amplify language. Take the opportunity to introduce language that supports their sharing of ideas when appropriate. Think about amplification of language and ideas, rather than simplification. 

• Invite the whole child into the conversation. Allow students to use their full linguistic repertoire to explain and elaborate on their ideas. Be creative in ways that allow them to express themselves: translanguaging, technology use, and peer support are just some examples. 

• Listen. Above all, listen to their ideas so you can identify ways to build or expand on them and so that you can center them in whole group discussions. 

Some teachers use the teaching practice of eliciting and interpreting student thinking to bring in new voices and ideas into classroom discussions. They see this practice as centering students and their ideas in teaching and learning. Eliciting student ideas is the beginning of centering your students in your teaching, but it is not enough to elicit their ideas, one must engage with those ideas. When students see their teachers genuinely curious about their ideas, it deepens their belief that their teachers care, but most importantly, it also deepens their belief that their ideas matter and are worthy of examination. In these classrooms, the worthiness of an idea is not whether it is right or wrong but it relies on the richness of idea to be explored and investigated. Classrooms that promote inquiry are the perfect space for eliciting, interpreting and centering student ideas. You can find some examples in the table below: 

Next time you engage your class in a discussion, make sure to strategize how to include multilingual learners and their ideas to amplify their and everyone’s learning!