English academic discourse in U.S. institutions rests on Eurocentric rhetoric where hidden assumptions and expectations may place transnational students at a disadvantage in instruction, assessment, and entrance into communities of practice. The author's empirical research draws on transnational students, faculty, and staff perceptions into linguistically sustaining pedagogy to bring awareness to transnational lived experience and to make recommendations for equitable instruction and assessment. Bakhtin's dialogism and negotiation and the Academic Literacies model provide theoretical frameworks to provide practical recommendations while also examining the negative discourse and deficit-based practices surrounding English learners in American higher education. A discussion of a course redesign highlights possibilities for valuing the transnational student and offering equitable pedagogy while also increasing student investment in language learning.
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With the national conversation in The United States turned to systemic racism and antiracism, academic English cannot be left unexamined for its role in perpetuating marginalization and oppression among multilingual and transnational students studying in The United States. Cummins’s crucial work in bilingual education highlights xenophobic rhetoric and examines the way academic discourse promotes monolingual education (Cummins, 2000). English academic discourse and expectations in American institutions rest on hidden assumptions that may place transnational students at a disadvantage in instruction, assessment, and entrance into communities of practice. Theoretical frameworks such as Bakhtin’s dialogism and Academic Literacies work to help develop asset-based pedagogy that is equitable for all students.
The research results here are a response to decade long observations of the multilingual student experience and the overarching deficit-based teaching pedagogy they face. An important component of the work is an attempt to bring awareness to their experience and to make recommendations for moving to institutionalized asset-based pedagogy where student experience is valued. There are too many incidences of students being penalized unnecessarily for different logic and rhetorical styes, minor errors related to varying forms of English, and biased comments regarding a student's English ability.
The author’s empirical research draws on transnational student, faculty, and staff perceptions into linguistically sustaining pedagogy. Research respondents experience lower scores on academic English assignments, linguicism, and the potential inability to fully enter communities of practice where writing expectations contribute to a white racial habitus that include a focus on hyper-individualism, rule-governed writing, objective stances, and monolingual standards in reading and writing (Inoue, 2015; Inoue, 2019). Habitus is a way of being through experience and influences actions and understanding (Lee & Canagarajah, 2019). Identity and habitus are fluid throughout life in different contexts and negotiation and renegotiation must be acknowledged and acted on by any instructor who teaches academic English writing. Pedagogy needs to explicitly value and promote linguistic capital based on a globalized life where writer identity is negotiated in relation to the dominant norms.
Choosing qualitative research design involved a constructivist worldview and relied on participant views of understanding a situation and examined socially situated meaning (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Impediment to valuing a student’s linguistic repertoire is the maintenance of a monolingual environment in which assessment is founded on monolingual ideology and a preference for standard academic English where variations outside of this are considered different, deficit, and in need of repair as evidenced by faculty assessment comparing students to native speakers, overcorrecting grammatical errors in hopes of fixing a student’s writing, and demanding specific logic. All of these are indicative of devaluing transnational identities in deficit-based assessment and practical recommendations are necessary to combat inequitable assessment.
Critical and creative negotiations in classrooms happen through dialogical pedagogies that encourage collaboration. The ability to negotiate with students about discourse demands to position themselves for inclusion should not be underestimated (Canagarajah, 2006) and this explicit negotiation helps create investment in language learning. While social negotiation is not new to the field of teaching English as an additional language, Bakhtin’s theories may add foundations and expansions for research and classroom recommendations. Bakhtin’s view of language is dialogic in which meaning making is blended, evolving, and dynamic and in consideration of addressivity, sociohistorical contexts, chains of communication, and an acknowledgment to authoritative discourse (Lillis, 2003) where “writing is rhetorical negotiation for achieving social meanings and functions…it is also performative” (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 602). Bakhtin’s dialogism may bring students into discourse communities while also valuing different forms of rhetoric and examining power structures.