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Fostering Linguistic Diversity

FIRST Series, November 9, 2023

Dr. Rebeca Fernández �Writing Center Director

Dr. Fangzhi He �Multilingual Writing Coordinator

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Warm-up Discussion

What experiences have you had with international students?

What are the strengths and challenges of international students you have observed?

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Demographic and Linguistic Landscape at Davidson

1,927 students
30% students of color
11% international students from over 60 countries and regions.�

Fast Facts, n.d. https://www.davidson.edu/about/fast-facts

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Student Voices�(From DEA discussion)

Unable to actively participate

Underrepresentation/overrepresentation

Lack of support from faculty and staff

Lack of support during crisis, such as natural disasters and political conflicts

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Challenges with Reading, Writing, and Conventions �(Wette et al., 2023)

Not sure when, how, what to cite (Conventions)
Limitation knowledge about citation knowledge and purposes (Conventions)
Lack of knowledge about Anglophone writing conventions (Conventions)
Self-doubt about evaluating authoritative texts, taking a stance, entering a conversation with sources to show their voice (Critical Reading)
Difficulty in understanding the sources (Critical Reading)
Difficulty in identifying the themes among sources (Critical Reading)
Limited word and sentence repertoire to paraphrase and report the sources (Writing)

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Academic Help-seeking and Contributions

International students:

Use the CTL actively:

⅓ seek writing support resources
⅔ are tutored in ECO and MAT/SCI
They seek the CTL, on average, at least 4 times per semester�

Contribute highly to the CTL as tutoring staff (36%)

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Discuss and Share

Have you noticed any of these challenges shared by students in your own teaching?
What strategies do you rely on when working with international students?

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Strategies to Support Multilingual Students

Knowing your students beyond classroom
Providing extra visual and oral support while presenting information
Giving students time to prepare before sharing
Offering students explicit feedback
Encouraging students to interpret readings and brainstorming ideas in their own language
Incorporating readings and assignments that allow them to build on their strengths
Encouraging students to learn some words from the languages that multilingual students speak

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Looking Across the Horizon

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Honor

Students��Courtesy of the Registrar’s Office

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Writing Development

With respect to writing, we see significant growth over time, regardless of major, though certainly, students whose majors require more writing demonstrated greater, sustained growth than those who do not. In our research, we measured growth according to historical markers of proficiency in the field of second language writing.

By the end of their final semester:

Students’ accuracy (p <.03) and clarity (p <.01) improved significantly.
Changes in syntactic complexity were not significant.
Clauses per sentence fluctuated throughout the four years; changes in complexity were only significant between the first and last semester when measured by mean length of sentence (MLS).
Verbal SAT scores were positively correlated with accuracy only during the first semester of college.
TOEFL scores were only correlated with accuracy during the first year of college.
Neither was associated with changes in accuracy, clarity or complexity thereafter. Complexity and accuracy were negatively correlated.
While disaggregated data revealed variegated pathways for each subject, all individuals improved in accuracy and 88% showed improvements in clarity between the first and eighth semesters.

We analyzed 69 papers collected over eight semesters according to the following dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency:

Accuracy: identified grammatical errors per clause (Fischer, 1984; Bardovi-Harlig & Bofman, 1989; Storch 2005; Storch, 2009), as determined by three raters.
Complexity: measured sentence complexity according to clauses per sentence, MLS, and t-units (Ishikawa, 1995; Tsang, W. K, & Wong,M. 2000; Lu, 2010; Ortega, 2003).
Clarity: read the papers for sentence-level barriers to reader’s comprehension of text independently and deliberated until reaching consensus.

Applying ANOVA, we evaluated four years’ worth of data. We conducted t-tests to compare first and last semester writing samples and Pearson Product correlations to determine relationship between SAT, TOEFL scores and the L2 dimensions.