Integrating Multilingual Students into College Classrooms

This book is a welcome collaboration by two seasoned professionals from the fields of TESOL and Composition. It is an accessible, enjoyable book that will benefit language/writing instructors, teacher-educators, and especially faculty across the disciplines. It is grounded in current realities and knowledge, extremely practical, timely, and useful.

-- Dana R. Ferris, University of California, Davis, USA

This elegantly written volume is a true gift to those of us who administer and teach in programs for multilingual students. Its powerful and compelling arguments for integrating this student population into the mainstream of our academic communities along with its concrete suggestions for how faculty can better understand the needs of these students, more appropriately structure their assignments, and more fairly assess their work will help us all in our task of advocating for our students and educating our administrators and other faculty across the disciplines.

-- Donna M. Brinton, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

What is most surprising about Integrating Multilingual Students into College Classrooms is that a resource of this quality and applicability is finally available! The need for a clear, practical guide to working with these learners in regular college content classes has been so obvious and so urgent for so long - especially for detailed frameworks that can apply to a wide range of classroom contexts. The principles involved in making the kind of adjustments required in mainstream courses at the post-secondary level are well understood by the profession, but being able to interpret them for instructors in other disciplines as is accomplished in this well-written format is a significant accomplishment. The response by faculty "trainees" to several of the sections has been understandably enthusiastic - as will be yours.

-- William Acton, Trinity Western University, British Columbia, Canada

The book fills a much needed gap in the literature on academic language development for college-level nonnative speakers of English, which the authors view not as the sole responsibility of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or English as Second Language (ESL) departments, but of faculty throughout the academy. In my view, Hafernik and Wiant have succeeded in their task of producing a highly beneficial reference book for college faculty across the disciplines whose classes comprise both US and international-born students. The authors take seriously the claim that multilingual students in the college classroom are assets with the potential to enrich the lives of all of us. Indeed, the greatest strength of this book is that the vast majority of strategies offered as effective teaching practices for multilingual students will likely raise student achievement universally, making the suggestions here a true win-win for all concerned.

-- Susan Bleyle, University of Georgia, USA * International Journal of Multicultural Education, vol 15 (2), 20