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Multilingual Student Writers

The Symposium on Multilingual Student Writers addresses multilingual student needs in the writing classroom and provides teachers with hands-on approaches they can adapt for use in their specific educational settings.

Previous Symposia

2009 Symposium - One Size Does Not Fit All: Addressing General and Discipline-Specific Conventions for Academic Writing What does it mean to teach writing? Writing is definitely not a case of one size fits all. General writing courses like freshman composition are filled with students from a variety of backgrounds and writing abilities who are heading into a range of different disciplines. So, how can these courses balance general composition requirements with students’ need to later master disciplinary writing? During the symposium, we looked at some ways to address both general and specific aspects of writing, including equipping students with tools to help them become autonomous writers. Specifically, we explored how writing teachers and also students can look at the writing expectations and conventions of various disciplines and use that information to shape writing instruction and the writing that they produce. Information from corpus linguistics was used to identify characteristics of disciplinary writing. Read more about 2009 Symposium - One Size Does Not Fit All: Addressing General and Discipline-Specific Conventions for Academic Writing	2007 Symposium - Guiding Academic Language Development in the Writing Classroom The 2007 symposium on academic language development consisted of two presentations, each followed by small group work, giving participants time to discuss and collaborate with colleagues from colleges and universities throughout northern California. The morning session highlighted strategies for the teaching of grammar as a resource for writers. The afternoon session focused on writing from sources, more specifically, the linguistic challenges of paraphrase and summary. Read more about 2007 Symposium - Guiding Academic Language Development in the Writing Classroom
2006 Symposium - Responding to Multilingual Student Writers' Texts The 2006 symposium, which focused on response to student writing, was divided into two sessions, each with a presentation followed by small group work. Participants spent the morning session discussing ways to approach or improve feedback on student writing, with special consideration given to the needs of multilingual student writing. In the afternoon, participants examined more specifically language-focused considerations in response, looking at two related questions: (1) Does error feedback help student writers at all? and (2) What principles and strategies might the “treatment of error” involve? Read more about 2006 Symposium - Responding to Multilingual Student Writers' Texts	2005 Symposium - Working with the Generation 1.5 Student Writers in Our College Classrooms The 2005 symposium explored how to best meet the needs of generation 1.5 students in our college composition classrooms. Between whole group public addresses, participants broke into small groups to discuss implementation of ideas and techniques at the classroom level. Read more about 2005 Symposium - Working with the Generation 1.5 Student Writers in Our College Classrooms
2004 Symposium - Reaching Beneath the Surface to Access Sub-Text The 2004 symposium considered how writing instructors can help their students become more successful readers at the post-secondary level. Each presentation was followed by working groups that allowed attendees to discuss and collaborate with local colleagues. Read more about 2004 Symposium - Reaching Beneath the Surface to Access Sub-Text

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