It is a challenge to categorize linguistic minority students

• There are reasons both for and against tracking.
  • Tracking of multilingual students has been found to unnecessarily slow progress of entire demographic groups of students. ¹
  • The lack of standard terminology to categorize these students presents issues in research
    • Linguistic minority students are largely invisible in research on underrepresented populations in higher education because they are often grouped together with the first-generation and ethnic minority groups to which many belong.
      • There’s the saying, “What gets measured, gets managed” when discussing goals and performance; but something similar can be said for linguistic minority students in this case. Those who get measured get supported.
• It’s important to use language that promotes dignity and respect.
  • Labeling people into specific roles can limit their ability to utilize their skills and talents@2022frederiksen_great
    • language choice makes assumptions about the student before they’ve had a chance to speak for themselves; promoting implicit biases.
  • None of the terms used to describe linguistic minority students can adequately describe the range of identities and backgrounds these students have.
    • For example, some students have previous experience in higher education institutions in other countries and some do not. This has an impact on how quickly students can adapt to the expectations and culture of academic life.
• It is important to have standard terms in policy and academic communication.
  • There are several terms used in different contexts.
    • The term bilingual or multilingual became common as a way to center the assets that linguistic minority students bring to the classroom².
    • The term linguistic minority is used in higher education and applied linguistic contexts to describe students who speak a language other than English at home in English-dominant societies.²
    • Terms such as English language learners (ELLs) and limited English proficient (LEP) are commonly used in K-12 education but focus primarily on the deficits of students.²
      • The term limited English proficient is also used in Title IX.
      • Technically terms like ESL, ELL, and LEP only describe students who are currently in those support programs and not once they leave or no longer “limited”.

It can be difficult to adequately label such a diverse group as linguistic minority students

^36a0ab ^4312c7 ^aedad2 ^02e56c ^0c0c0e ^dd0c9f ^dd0c9f ^634ed1 ^230268 ^6d85c9 ^3b5493 ^c92b70 It is a challenge to categorize linguistic minority students ^140aa0

Footnotes

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2. ^4f1342 ↩ ↩² ↩³