In some of the First Year Writing (FYW) classes I teach, I invite students to translanguage, that is, to write in multiple languages. Early in the semester, we read Gloria Azaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and 1-2 articles by Geneva Smitherman. As the semester progresses, I introduce Hip-hop texts from diverse parts of the world. In our reading of all these texts, I ask students to identify strategies used by the writers to compose in multiple languages. One way of helping students identify the strategies is to ask them to think about parts of the writing/text that helps them understand what…
Author: Esther Milu
Esther Milu
I am PhD Student in Rhetoric and Writing at Michigan State University. I research about translingual literacy as practiced in schools and communities.