The Canadian Modern Language Review / La revue canadienne des langues vivantes

College background and student population

This small community college, located in a large northeastern US metropolis, is part of a large public urban university. The college offers programs in liberal arts and sciences, nursing, criminal justice, business management, and early childhood education, among others. Based on [End Page 531] college data, 59.9% of the student body is Latino, 22.4% is Black or African, 2.1% is White, 0.7% is Asian, and 0.7% is Native American, with the remaining unspecified. Females comprise 65.5% of the student body.² The average age of students is 25. Over 85% of freshmen take at least one remedial course and about one third need remediation in mathematics, English reading, and writing.³ Approximately 40% of freshmen drop out before their second academic year. Sixty-three percent of entering students report speaking a language other than English (LOTE⁴) at home, with Spanish being the most prevalent.

Students’ profiles reveal that many have graduated from high school in the United States; others have received high school diplomas in their country of origin; some hold GED diplomas in English or in an LOTE. While some are long-time residents, others are newly arrived in the country. A few have spent time travelling back and forth from the United States to their country of origin and, as a result, have received their education in more than one language. College policies today strongly support English as a second language (ESL), remedial, and content courses in English because students’ command of academic English differs widely. Students are not able to take most courses in their academic concentration until they have passed two mandated university examinations in reading and writing. Despite this requirement, many students who pass continue to struggle with the reading and writing assignments required in college content courses.

Rationale for integrating bilingual and multilingual education in US community colleges

In the last several decades, bilingual education programs, whose main goal is to develop students’ biliterate skills in two languages, adding L2 to L1, have proven beneficial for minority students in the United States. These programs have helped them markedly to acquire English and to advance academically in elementary and high school (Baker, 2011, pp. 254–281; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006; Ramírez, 1992; Thomas & Collier, 1997, 2002). Currently, bilingual education around the world is expanding to include multilingual education caused by the influx of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds enrolled in multilingual classrooms today. Multilingual education (Abello-Contesse, Chandler, López-Jiménez, & Chacón-Beltrán, 2013; Cenoz, 2009; Cenoz & Gorter, 2015; García, 2009, pp. 266– 280; Wright, Boun, & García, 2015) values the linguistic practices of students exposed to one, two or more languages and employs their practices to develop their linguistic skills, biliteracy, or multiliteracies. The plurilingual pedagogies (Cummins, 2009; García with Flores, 2012; [End Page 532] García & Sylvan, 2011) employed in multilingual classrooms today make use of the flexible and hybrid ways in which bilingual students use their dominant and less dominant languages naturally and interactively in social settings. These translingual practices (Canagarajah, 2013), also called translanguaging (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García, 2009, pp. 45–47; Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012), can be successful tools in teaching (García & Wei, 2014, pp. 90–118) and learning (García & Wei, 2014, pp. 78–89) language and content in classes with bilingual students. Translanguaging consists of dynamic mixing and switching languages in various contexts. Students can read a text in a language and discuss it in another. They may use bilingual dictionaries and switch languages in the classroom to complete assignments. Bilinguals’ two languages do not seem to function as “two solitudes” (Cummins, 2008, p. 65), but they interact with and influence (Arabski, 2006; Cook, 2003; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Pavlenko & Jarvis, 2002) each other and can support each other academically (Cummins, 1979, 1991). In addition, they activate in parallel fashion in their brains, even when bilinguals are using only one language (Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Kroll, Gullifer, & Rossi, 2013), and are highly intertwined.

Throughout the world, bilingual and trilingual college instruction is increasing at a fast pace to meet students’ growing need for English competency due to globalization (Cenoz & Etxague, 2013; Cenoz & Gorter, 2015; Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2013). However, the role of bilingual instruction in US institutions of higher education is practically non-existent (García, Pujol-Ferran, & Reddy, 2013, pp. 178–180), in part due to the belief that English, being the most important international language, is the only one needed in higher education. In addition, studies documenting multilingual education and successful dynamic plurilingual pedagogies involve elementary (Ballinger, 2015; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Wei, 2015) and high school (García, Flores, & Homonoff Woodley, 2015) bilingual and multilingual content and language classrooms. Until now, no studies have been done on dynamic plurilingual pedagogies in the college content classroom.

Our case studies show that minority students, who are at high risk of dropping out of college due to academic language difficulties, could benefit greatly from bilingual and multilingual education. Plurilingual pedagogies enable them to increase their self-esteem, understand content material, and fully engage in classroom activities.

Plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum

The dynamic plurilingual pedagogies that we examine across the curriculum are translation, code-switching, cross-linguistic analysis, and [End Page 533] the use of students’ dominant languages to complete assignments. These pedagogies all integrate translanguaging or translingual practices; professors exploit their linguistic resources in two or more languages to teach in creative ways, and students utilize their full linguistic repertoires to interact with one another, construct meaning, and learn academic language and content. It is often difficult to separate each pedagogical practice in the classroom. In this paper, each of us illustrates one or two plurilingual pedagogies in context (see Table 1); we then reflect on the impact those practices have on students’ learning.

Plurilingual pedagogies are implemented within a language ecology framework for instruction (Hornberger, 2002, 2003; van Lier, 2008), where language learning becomes, for students, a path to new and stronger social ideologies about their native and non-native languages. Content learning improves when students’ various linguistic systems and language skills, previous personal and cultural experiences, and prior acquired knowledge are all valued and integrated into the classroom. As a result, a comfortable learning environment emerges that strengthens students’ social relationships. They discover what they really know and share it with one another with the freedom of speaking, writing, and doing research in several languages. They experience social and intellectual epiphanies that become catalysts to strong motivation in their overall learning. By no means does this framework of instruction exclude English monolinguals. On the contrary, they work together with ESL students and benefit from each other’s diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Plurilingual pedagogies empower all of our students to explore their linguistic strengths and apply them with confidence toward learning.

In the college, plurilingual pedagogies co-exist with traditional English-only instructional approaches. Many students are in need of remediation and take ESL and English courses along with our content courses. This combined practice does not have negative effects on their learning. On the contrary, the fact that students are doing well in our courses (see Table 1) may be an incentive for them to remain enrolled. Cognitively, the knowledge that students acquire in a classroom or in a social environment in one language is stored in longterm memory and can be accessed and applied to other academic and social settings, using the same or the other language (Cummins, 1979, 1991). Bilingual brains are highly flexible and plastic (Costa & Sebastián-Gallés, 2014; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013). They are used to switching from one language to the other with ease. Also, making connections between students’ two languages (Garcia with Flores, 2012, p. 241) and continuing to improve their literacy skills in their [End Page 534]

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Table 1.

Overview of disciplines and courses, language groups in the classroom, teaching procedures, plurilingual pedagogies, and course evaluation

[End Page 535]

dominant language can significantly develop their literacy skills in their less dominant language, English in this case (Cummins 1991; García, Pujol-Ferran, & Reddy, 2013).

Plurilingual pedagogies strengthen our teaching because (a) they validate our own linguistic repertoires and we are challenged to explore them in creative ways; (b) we can continue to maintain academic rigour while implementing them; (c) they provide a forum for interdisciplinary support and collaboration. We meet regularly, discuss curricular challenges, provide constructive feedback, and reflect on students’ progress. Our small college environment fosters a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration (Núñez Rodríguez, DiSanto, Morales, Feliz, & Brennan, 2014) where professors from various departments share instructional approaches and do research.

Building up chemistry knowledge using students’ personal backgrounds (Núñez Rodríguez)

I have been teaching chemistry and biology for 20 years, first in Argentina and Cuba, and for the past 10 years at the college. Overall, my college experience includes teaching in two languages, both of which have been at the core of my personal and academic journeys. Using my bilingual background, I incorporate my students’ linguistic pluralism in the learning process. In doing so, I nurture a congenial learning atmosphere where students can more confidently tackle the chemistry content using their dominant and less-dominant languages.

The two plurilingual pedagogies I employ in my chemistry course for science and engineering majors are (a) making vocabulary connections and allowing for translations, and (b) connecting students’ personal narratives to science knowledge and skills. The languages students use in their daily lives are used as a tool to introduce new concepts and circumvent the potential barrier of the language of chemistry. All students have passed the mandated English reading and writing examinations and are at various levels of English proficiency. The class composition is 90% percent male, and most students’ mother tongues are French or Spanish (see Table 1 for the specifics). I follow a three-step procedure to integrate the two plurilingual pedagogies.

I start by introducing the theme of every chapter by brainstorming. The unit on thermochemistry, for example, is often daunting since understanding energy is usually difficult for college students and requires abstract reasoning skills. Students share content keywords, such as heat and its meaning and translation, in front of their classmates as a class discussion. Not only do they translate these words [End Page 536] into their dominant languages but they also explain their meanings in connection to their personal experiences. Taking advantage of their dominant languages and cultural experiences, they write down key ideas related to chemistry concepts on the classroom board or in their notebooks. Depending on their background, students share words in English, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Yoruba, and several other African languages. They write “chaleur” and “calor” on the board and pronounce them. It does not matter if other students or I do not understand all the words students write; every student approaches the concept from his or her personal experience. I capitalize on this moment and allow students to recall ideas associated with the concept from their personal lives. Students’ fear associated with learning new content in the science class instantly disappears, and they start exploring the new chemistry content with confidence. Students embark upon a conversation where an organic inter-cultural moment takes place. I speak English in the classroom and translate students’ comments about any personal idea into disciplinary language. I speak Spanish only if I am with a group of Spanish-speaking students who feel more comfortable using Spanish.

The reluctance that many college students exhibit toward the sciences is abated because the potential barrier that English discourse presents is removed. Regardless of students’ proficiency levels in English, chemistry is a new language for everyone. Students share personal and cultural experiences about the topic with other classmates in small groups in their dominant languages, and then with the whole class in English. For example, for the heat topic, students from tropical countries share experiences about how heat affected their clothing and daily routines and how their habits changed when they had to wear coats in winter. I use these experiences to conceptualize ideas related to heat transfer, heat conservation, and heat quantification.

I introduce and elaborate upon academic concepts by selecting ideas from personal narratives. For example, I use students’ ideas about hot and cold temperatures to introduce the difficult connections between thermal energy and potential energy related to chemical bonds. Thus, all students begin appropriating these new concepts from the language in which they feel most comfortable. Students express, in their dominant languages, the discussed ideas using the language of chemistry. This practice conceptualizes students’ personal ideas using chemistry vocabulary and gives students a college-content angle to appreciate each other’s culture while opening a potentially lifelong constructivist exploration of the science curriculum. I always revisit students’ personal stories when capitalizing on specific knowledge. This practice engages students in the learning process. [End Page 537]

Importantly, merging students’ dominant languages into the learning process requires a constant appraisal of teaching methodologies. Indeed, making vocabulary connections between chemistry concepts and students’ dominant languages, as well as allowing students to recall personal narratives associated with chemistry concepts, fosters a safe learning atmosphere. I capitalize on students’ diverse linguistic experiences and prior knowledge as a foundation for building literacy in the sciences.

Using students’ dominant and less dominant languages in drama and performance (Morales)

One of the most effective ways for students to learn or improve in a new language is through the use of drama or theatre in the classroom. As a bilingual (Spanish/English) theatre professor, I create dramatic activities that foster student participation, understanding, and appreciation of multilingual and multicultural dramatic arts. I value and integrate my bilingual skills and those of my students in the classroom. English monolinguals, bilinguals, ESL students, and students learning an LOTE are given scenes or plays from world literature to rehearse and perform in various languages. Our diverse multilingual backgrounds provide a rich, safe, and dynamic learning environment where dramatic performances unfold in natural and authentic ways. Theatre games and exercises engage students through role-playing, memorization, pronunciation practice, improvisation, storytelling, and movement.

The two plurilingual pedagogies I utilize are translation and code-switching. I integrate them into my teaching in the following way: (a) I present the scripts to be learned by the students; (b) we do group reading and role-play the scripts; (c) we discuss vocabulary in depth; (d) students memorize the scripts while practising pronunciation; (e) students rehearse and perform the scripts before an audience; and (f) students write and improvise new scripts.

Students creatively explore the various meanings of vocabulary and expressions in scripts and plays through discussion, rehearsal, and role-playing. Performance initiates psychological responses to words and expressions, often manifested through gestures and translations in students’ dominant languages. The performance aspect makes communication visceral and directly connects to the core of each student’s unique cultural experience because they interpret scenes according to their cultural backgrounds. In addition, translations embody a set of personal and cultural emotions.

Students can also add or write new scenes to the scripts, resulting in an enriching multicultural experience. They often include words [End Page 538] and expressions in their dominant languages, exposing the class to vocabulary in a second or third language. The course is taught in English, and students are required to write mostly in English, but they also have the freedom to write a bilingual or multilingual script.

Translation (Cummins, 2008, p. 73) and code-switching (García with Flores, 2012, p. 240) can be valid and valuable plurilingual pedagogies in this drama course. Translation occurs explicitly or implicitly: students translate a scene from one language into another and perform it in both languages for the audience (explicit); a character can also ask a question, let’s say in French, and another character can reply in another language (implicit). The audience members who do not speak French figure out the question by listening to the reply in English or Spanish. Code-switching happens in bilingual classrooms (Zentella, 1981) when speakers alternate between two languages. The following script exemplifies implicit translation and code-switching:

Pantoja:

Where were you born?

Héctor, as a teenager:

Nací en Aibonito.

Pantoja:

De la montaña. I’m from Santurce. When did you come to New York?

Héctor, as a teenager:

Hace tres años. Vine en avión. Sueño todo el tiempo en volverme a montar en uno. (Martínez, 2011)

When students role-play the characters in a play in more than one language, they make use of dynamic translingual practices because translation and code-switching are used not only for interacting in meaningful ways but also for learning about a dramatic play. Moreover, students engage in translation and code-switching when interacting among each other in the drama class.

Rehearsing and performing new roles in more than one language help students to be less apprehensive. A role provides a degree of safety; therefore, students are not afraid to make mistakes in their less dominant language. I serve as a facilitator and assure students that it is the characters in the play who made mistakes, not them (Bolton, 1985). As a result, students are less self-conscious and develop self-confidence.

Students who are dominant in English or an LOTE, such as Spanish, can become linguistic models for those who are less dominant in that language. Memorizing a script enables students to identify with the thought patterns, pronunciation, and grammatical structures of a given language. Students speak, adopt certain expressions, and behave like native speakers through repetition and performance (Horovitz & Whitestone, 1998). They move beyond the surface of the scripts and explore meanings in depth. In addition, becoming more [End Page 539] aware of their bodies during performances improves their speech. Ultimately, acting with the use of translation and code-switching lessens inhibitions toward communication in any language, making it dynamic and fun.

Students keep a journal where they reflect on course activities and their learning after each class session. They often write about how they collaborate with one another and how they develop the vocabulary and the language skills needed to perform with confidence before an audience. Their journals are proof of their personal growth as well as an effective measure for me to evaluate their academic progress.

Supporting plurilingual pedagogies through learning styles in an education course (DiSanto)

As a former high school Spanish teacher, I observed language teaching shift from isolated grammar and vocabulary drilling exercises to rich, content-based skills study where translanguaging is a valid practice. As a learning-styles specialist, I believe that content material is best acquired through students’ individual styles and their strongest traits (Dunn, 2003).⁵ Thus, my teaching methodology embraces students’ individual learning styles while translanguaging, resulting in greater achievement levels caused by an increase in my students’ outlook toward their general education.

The Foundation of Education course that I teach is often taken by Latino students, placed at various ESL and English levels, who struggle with course content. I teach with two objectives in mind. First, I present material through various perceptual modalities of learning, making connections to students’ dominant languages and allowing for vocabulary translation. Second, I allow students to use all their dominant languages to complete assignments in class and for homework. Both practices enable students to relax, manipulate the material effortlessly, and build confidence with the English language. My teaching consists of a four-step process: first, I provide a question for inquiry; second, students explore content vocabulary and meaning in depth; third, I give a short lecture about foundational information; finally, students do a practical exercise in small groups.

Research conducted across the globe, with participants who spoke a wide range of languages, indicates that introducing academic content through the individual’s strongest modality has a positive effect on academic achievement and attitude (Honigsfeld, 2003). Therefore, I present material using a variety of perceptual modalities: visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. I integrate PowerPoint presentations, Internet resources, newspaper articles, online discussion forums, and [End Page 540] graphic organizers. When I present a topic such as “The Identity of a Teacher,” with content vocabulary such as metacognition and efficacy, students first have to dissect the terms. We break down the words into prefixes and suffixes, allowing students to draw comparisons to words in their dominant languages, mainly Spanish and French. Students relate to the roots of the words. If a student’s dominant language is not Spanish or French, that student is called to the blackboard to become the instructor. She takes the English words and helps the other students break them into recognizable root words, sharing the translation in her dominant language.⁶

Students assimilate content using their strongest perceptual modality and the language(s) of their choice. They can also work with the sociological structure of their preference (Honigsfeld and Dove, 2010): in a pair, within a small group, or with a facilitator, and collaboration is vital for them to interpret directions and rubrics while using a common language. For example, one group task is to list five reasons why someone might be a teacher. This prompt allows for culturally relevant responses as students draw from the practices and attitudes about teachers that exist in their homeland. Students discuss the fact that the word teacher does not adequately showcase the respect given to the teaching profession when compared with maestro (Italian and Spanish), professeur (French) or sunsengnim (Korean).

During the semester, students are required to select six articles for a research paper on a current topic in education. Research, note-taking, summarizing, and writing first drafts can be done in students’ dominant tongues or in English with LOTEs. Students must document their work in progress. All work, regardless of the language used during preparation, is submitted. The final draft must be written in English. Through translanguaging, students within each group support one another, sharing articles and resources, reading and synthesizing the information, providing constructive feedback to one another for final drafts, and helping proofread their written work. Students develop confidence in their ability to complete college work in English by drawing on their dominant languages.

In conclusion, vocabulary translation and the use of students’ dominant languages to complete oral and written assignments are two plurilingual pedagogies that integrate translanguaging as an effective tool for students to collaborate and learn. Addressing individual perceptual strengths provides additional support: tactile (through hand movement), visual (through text), and auditory (through conversation). Ultimately, translanguaging provides students with an opportunity to strengthen their research skills, make connections between [End Page 541] their dominant languages and English, and master course material in depth.

Doing cross-linguistic analysis⁷ in a comparative linguistics course (Pujol-Ferran)

I have taught ESL and linguistics courses in the college for two decades. I have also spent my entire life learning languages. I grew up speaking Catalan and French at home but learned to read in Spanish first. My education has been in these three languages as well as in English, which I learned later. Translanguaging has been a successful practice in my education, and I encourage it in the classroom.

The multilingual pedagogy that I present highlights cross-linguistic analysis implemented in a Comparative Linguistics (English and Spanish) course. I welcome a heterogeneous group of bilingual Latinos whose competencies and proficiencies in English and Spanish vary considerably. Most students are simultaneously taking ESL or remedial courses. Students help one another develop academic proficiency in both languages while I serve as a facilitator.

In the classroom, students compare and contrast the sounds, grammar and structures, and vocabulary of English and Spanish, presented in meaningful contexts. Connections between the two languages are made explicitly or implicitly. Students read, write, and express themselves in both languages in dynamic and flexible ways. They explore various types of texts for different academic purposes. Understanding how English and Spanish function phonologically, semantically, and syntactically strengthens students’ metalinguistic skills (García, 2009, p. 95). They learn similarities and differences between the two languages and think about language uses when interacting with others or when editing their written work. They also consider how their bilingual mind works by exploring instances of positive transfer or interference.

I follow a six-step sequence (adapted from Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014, pp. 216–219) in teaching: 1) I motivate students to share what they know about a new topic in either language; 2) students explore the lesson’s focus by reading two texts (see below) and identifying nouns and definite articles in pairs; 3) in pairs or small groups, students make connections between the two texts highlighting similarities and differences between English and Spanish; 4) the class as a whole discusses the lesson’s focus; I elaborate when needed; 5) students practise the lesson’s focus by exploring other texts on the topic; 6) I evaluate whether the lesson’s focus has been learned using new texts in various activities. [End Page 542]

The excerpts below, about Hurricane Irene, were presented in class to explore the uses of definite articles in English (the) and Spanish (el, la, los, las).⁸ In small groups, students underlined the nouns and circled the articles in both texts and analysed how the articles were used.

. . . After wide-ranging precautionary measures by city officials that included shutting down New York’s mass-transit network, sandbagging storefronts on Fifth Avenue and issuing evacuation orders for 370,000 people across the city, Hurricane Irene is likely to be remembered by New Yorkers more for what did not happen than for what did. Windows in skyscrapers did not shatter. Subway tunnels did not flood. Power was not shut off . . . and the water grid did not burst . . . .

(Dolnick, 2011)

. . .El huracán Irene obligó a cancelar vuelos y a cerrar la empresa ferroviaria Amtrak que canceló el sábado y parte del domingo los trenes entre Florida y Boston. Sólo en la tarde de ayer se comenzaba a recobrar la normalidad en los aeropuertos afectados. Los mayores daños los provocó el huracán Irene en Nueva Jersey, donde hubo numerosas inundaciones. . . Las autoridades federales, además, han querido evitar la repetición de los errores y la falta de preparación que vivió el golfo de México con el huracán Katrina en 2005 . . . .

(Alandete, 2011)

Students immediately noticed that unlike English, Spanish articles have gender and number. They realized that in English, plural count nouns (e.g. subway tunnels) and singular un-count nouns (e.g. power), used in a general sense, do not take any article. However, in Spanish, articles are used almost all the time before nouns (e.g. los trenes, la normalidad), even in the title of the passage (e.g. El huracán Irene). Students discussed how their two languages transferred and influenced one another. While dominant Spanish speakers admitted that they often overused the article (the) when writing in English, dominant English speakers said they often failed to provide all the required articles when writing in Spanish. A student reflected as follows:

Yo no sabía que no se dice “the Hurricane Irene” en inglés. A mí me suena bien. Ya comprendo pues, porque mi profesor de inglés always crosses out the article “the” in my essays. I see (reflectively).

My experience has been that cross-linguistic analysis presented in meaningful contexts is a powerful bilingual pedagogy that involves translanguaging. Cross-linguistic analysis encourages students to raise their metalinguistic awareness, enhance their bilingual proficiencies, and take charge of their rich and dynamic language-learning experiences. [End Page 543]

Discussion and conclusions

In this paper, we have illustrated how we integrate plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum, in science, humanities, education, and linguistics courses, at a small community college. The college serves minority students, with a high percentage of Latinos, who often struggle with academic English and content courses and are at a high risk of dropping out. Plurilingual pedagogies are dynamic and fluid translingual practices, which consist of “making meaning, shaping experiences, gaining understanding and knowledge through the use of two or (more) languages” (Baker, 2011, p. 288). These practices go beyond the use of English-only instruction in the classroom and directly tap into students’ unique linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Students may be empowered to discover their academic and linguistic strengths and employ them to learn academic language and content with confidence and satisfaction. The plurilingual pedagogies we examined are translation, code-switching, cross-linguistic analysis, and the use of students’ dominant languages to complete assignments.

Our experiences show that plurilingual pedagogies can help make content accessible to minority students, raise their confidence, and motivate them to remain enrolled. This is possible because plurilingual pedagogies create a safe and dynamic learning environment that allows for students’ spontaneous participation and interactions; encourage students to collaborate, support, and learn from one another and strengthen their relationships; embrace students’ linguistic diversity and cherish their cultural experiences; stimulate students to manipulate academic content by translating concepts and making connections to prior knowledge and personal experiences; support students’ thinking skills by allowing them to reason in their dominant languages; develop students’ metalinguistic skills by examining similarities and differences between their dominant and less dominant languages; and serve as tools that can facilitate students’ literacy and biliteracy.

For us, as bilingual faculty, plurilingual pedagogies validate our full linguistic potential and challenge us to utilize all our resources in creative ways, making college teaching both enjoyable and, above all, real and meaningful to students. Also, our interdisciplinary collaboration provides us with opportunities for support, exploration, innovation, and growth.

Although our teaching is meant to address the needs of all students in multilingual community college classrooms, we are aware that the make-up of our classrooms is predominantly Latino, with English and Spanish as major languages. Therefore, our insights should not be generalized to more linguistically diverse groups who may display [End Page 544] other academic challenges. Yet addressing the linguistic and academic needs of the Latino population in US institutions of higher education is urgent and deserves reflection for sound and responsive actions and for effective and practical solutions.

Our students’ course completion rates and personal satisfaction levels are very high, which may be an indicator of students’ progress and retention, but we are cognizant that to validate plurilingual pedagogies across the college curriculum, more quantitative and qualitative research studies are needed to document students’ academic progress through both summative and formative evaluations.

Overall, we believe that our innovative instructional practices can shed some light on new, invigorating ideas about teaching and learning academic language and content across the community college curriculum. Our teaching experiences can certainly promote the continuation of research and thought-provoking debate on plurilingual pedagogies and translingual practices in the global classroom.