Spring 2025

Anti-Racism in EAL Teaching: Considering Plurilingualism

Students do not come as a tabula rasa, or blank slate. They come into classrooms with identities and cultures that are often explicitly connected to their language. – Lisa Olding

In the work that Alberta Routes does to support EAL practitioners, the majority of our workshops offer practical strategies and best practices for helping newcomers develop their language skills. Our hope is that instructors gain confidence in delivering programs that aim to improve a newcomer’s language competence so they can communicate effectively in Canadian society.

But beyond gaining pedagogical approaches, another area in which we invite EAL practitioners to grow, is in putting on a lens of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism in their teaching-learning encounters with English language learners.

In our workshop on Integrating Anti-Racist Principles in EAL Teaching Practices, the term “plurilingualism” is mentioned as one such lens.

Consider how many Canadian-born English speakers are monolingual, or if they are first generation immigrants typically from Europe, they may be bilingual. So English for them may be a first or second language. The term “ESL- English as a second language”, however, can mistakenly assume that “ESL” students are similarly monolingual or bilingual. Many of them are, in fact, plurilingual - having multiple languages in their cognitive and linguistic repertoire. They may not have mastered all these languages, for example, being able to understand one but not speak it fluently, but they have some knowledge and skill at their disposal. For them, English is merely an additional language, hence, the invitation to replace the term ESL with EAL – English as an Additional Language.

Anti-racist pedagogy challenges EAL practitioners to go even one step further. In educational institutions, the categorization of learners (and even teachers) as “native” and “non-native” speakers unconsciously creates a hierarchy in which the “native” speaker is more desirable. The very concept needs to be questioned. This anti-racist lens can also remind teachers to reject textbooks and teaching materials that use only stereotypical white faces as examples of English language users.

Today, a society of mixed languages – a multilingual society - is often the norm. A plurilingualistic approach to teaching invites practitioners to see English as only one of many languages that learners know and use not only to communicate but also to create their identity.

Accepting this linguistic diversity within a learner means respecting their right to use another language as a tool for learning English. Teachers can build on their learner’s first language (L1) by inviting them to consider similarities and differences in vocabulary, grammatical patterns, pragmatic and sociolinguistic uses of their L1 and English, thus enriching their awareness of the wealth of languages.

Gone are the days when using L1 in the English language classroom was prohibited. A learner’s L1 can be useful for clarifying task instructions or grammatical explanations. Bringing learners’ L1 into the classroom also reduces their anxiety and the cognitive load required to process new information, thus preventing de-motivation and lack of engagement.

To help honor learners’ experiences and backgrounds, teachers can also celebrate not just the external aspects of learners’ cultures, such as food or dress, but their lived experiences. For lower proficiency learners, Olding (2016) describes the use of “identity texts” – learners use their L1 to write a narrative of a lived experience then work with another learner to translate this into English. Learners gain not only vocabulary but an opportunity to build their plurilingual identity. Teachers gain the opportunity to share power in the classroom with learners, thus honoring the spirit of equity.

Anti-racist pedagogy also invites EAL practitioners to question even the notion of a “standard English.” Unfortunately, Canada is not yet at a point where a dominant language standard can be eliminated. EAL practitioners still need to support learners in achieving the language proficiency requirements for permanent residency, citizenship, or employment. But we need to remember to put English in its place not as the language that carries higher status or the one that learners need to master, but as a tool for gaining functional competency in social situations and a way to facilitate human dialogue.

With this lens, we can contribute to building equity and harmony in our multilingual communities.

References:

Iswati, L. and Hadimulyono, A. O. (2018). The role of L1 in L2 classes. Journal of English Education, Literature, and Culture. Vol. 3, No. 2 (125-134). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327391232_The_role_of_L1_in_L2_classes

Olding, L. (2017). Racism and English language learning: Employing an anti-racist approach to English as an additional language education. Simon Fraser University Educational Review, 9. https://doi.org/10.21810/sfuer.v9i.310

Sanako (2023 Jun 13). Effective L1 use in language classrooms. [Blog] https://sanako.com/effective-l1-use-in-language-classrooms

Trentman, E. (2019 Jan 25). Multilingualism and plurilingualism: Implications for the language classroom. [Blog]. https://emmatrentman.com/2019/01/25/multilingualism-and-plurilingualism-implications-for-the-language-classroom/

Wikipedia. Plurilingualism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurilingualism