Embracing Grammatical Diversity Among Multilingual Language Learners Across the Disciplines

Abstract

The increasing presence of multilingual writers in higher education, particularly in North American educational contexts, makes it difficult for educators to assume that all students write proficiently in standard edited English. Yet, educators still tend to expect students to produce English texts that are highly polished and error free without necessarily providing much instruction or support. This mismatch between reality and expectation is difficult for educators to resolve without sufficient training or expertise. The present chapter offers some guidance by describing various multilingual writers and their language variation and development. The authors then present common ideologies held by educators or proposed by theorists that can prevent multilingual writers from getting necessary language support. The chapter then proffers several suggestions for embracing grammatical diversity and supporting legitimate language development in order to better align teachers' expectations with the reality of grammatical diversity in high education.