Multilingual Strategies for Teaching English: Perspectives from Graduate Students in Multicultural Contexts

Vivit Rosmayanti; St. Wijdanah Ram

doi:10.31764/leltj.v14i1.38624

Multilingual Strategies for Teaching English: Perspectives from Graduate Students in Multicultural Contexts

Vivit Rosmayanti, St. Wijdanah Ram

Abstract

The increasing linguistic and cultural diversity of English classrooms requires pedagogical strategies that can support learners with different language backgrounds. However, graduate students’ perspectives as emerging English language educators remain underexplored in multilingual pedagogy research. This study aimed to examine how graduate students perceive and apply multilingual strategies in English language teaching within multicultural contexts. This study employed a qualitative research design. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis of bilingual teaching materials and students’ learning artifacts. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis supported by NVivo to identify recurring patterns related to multilingual teaching practices, students’ perspectives, and factors affecting implementation. The findings show that graduate students used several multilingual strategies, including translanguaging, bilingual resources, collaborative learning, code-switching, and linguistic scaffolding. These strategies helped improve students’ participation, comprehension, confidence, and sense of inclusion in English learning. However, the implementation of multilingual strategies was influenced by educator readiness, institutional support, availability of multilingual resources, and educational policy. The study implies that multilingual pedagogy should be integrated into teacher education, curriculum development, and professional training to prepare educators for linguistically diverse classrooms. Overall, this study highlights the importance of multilingual strategies as inclusive pedagogical practices in English language teaching

Keywords

Multilingual strategies; ELT; Multicultural Contexts; Bilingual Resources; Graduate Students

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.31764/leltj.v14i1.38624