Multi-Lingual and Multi-Identity: Writing in School as a 7th Grade Intermediate English Learner

Abstract

This article discusses a qualitative study centering the writing practices of seventh grade multilingual students in a small, urban city in Massachusetts. Analysis of participants' narrative and nonfiction writing reveal that emergent multilingual students inherently express multiple, sometimes contradictory identities due to their development as language learners and adolescents. Students achieved this by weaving through various languages (including different Englishes) and drawing on their lived experiences and observations. In doing so, multilingual young people disrupt unequal voices and language hierarchies by transgressing standard ideologies in academic writing. To affirm and promote the validity of translingual, heteroglossic writing, educators should consider multilingual texts as legitimate exemplars and develop heteroglossic literacy practices that support students to refine their pre-existing language use in service of their authorial intentions.