“If I’d Heard That Earlier, It Would Have Changed My Academic Experience”: Connections Between Language Brokering and Undergraduate Academic Writing

Children who engage in language brokering, serving as translators and interpreters for their non-English-speaking families, develop cognitive, linguistic, and academic skills through their brokering activities. However, language brokers’ linguistic assets are often undervalued or underutilized in higher education (Mazak & Carroll, 2017). The current study used a qualitative phenomenological approach to explore connections between language brokering and students’ academic writing as undergraduates. It also examined students’ own awareness of these connections. Finally, because written voice is a crucial aspect of academic writing and participation in the academic discourse community part of successful academic writing (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007; Wu, 2007; Zhao, 2017), the study explored undergraduate language brokers’ views of academic written voice. Drawing from an Enhanced Academic Performance framework of language brokering (Kam & Lazarevic, 2014) and the theoretical lenses of language socialization (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984) and translanguaging (e.g., Vogel & Garc�a, 2017), the study used data from semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire to answer its research questions. Participants (N=22) were undergraduates at a large public university who had language brokered for their families as children, and in most cases continued to broker for their families as college students. Thematic analysis established fourteen characteristics, skills, and strategies common between language brokering and academic writing. All students demonstrated an explicit awareness of at least one connection between language brokering and undergraduate academic writing, although most connections became apparent to participants only after speaking about the activities at length during the interview. Of the total connections of characteristics, skills, and strategies (CSS) that occurred throughout students’ interviews, 56% (n=44) were explicitly recognized by participants, while 44% (n=35) were connected only implicitly, meaning that the participant mentioned the CSS in the context of either language brokering or writing but did not appear to connect the CSS as something common to both language brokering and writing. Participants defined voice as being related to stance or form and clarified that voice also differed by discipline. Students’ views toward the use of academic voice in writing varied, with some participants feeling confident or decisive when using academic voice, while others felt stressed, limited, detached, or like they were taking on a persona. Data on students’ school experiences, while limited, suggested that having negative experiences in school was associated with connecting a lower proportion of CSS between language brokering and writing, lower authorial confidence, and a lower sense of identification as an author. The findings of this study extend current language brokering research to an undergraduate population and provide empirical support connecting characteristics, skills, and strategies between the two activities. They support the use of translanguaging as a practice in writing and underscore the importance of school experiences on students’ academic self-efficacy and writer identities. Implications of these findings apply to both higher education and K-12 education; I urge educators at all levels to guide bi- and multilingual students to recognize their skills and strategies as academic strengths