This rationale attempts to position my intervention within the curriculum (see example SOW- figure 1). The project foregrounds the plurality of languages as a resource for exploring the mediation of worldviews and culture (Ponorac, 2022); considering language from an intersectional (Crenshaw, 1991) perspective, and as an aspect of social justice in the Anglonormative university space (Odeneyi, 2022). Bourdieu’s (1991) ‘linguistic capital’ resonates with the experience of “non-native” (L2) speakers of English at UAL, and how academic and societal ‘markets’ privilege English over other languages.
Figure 1. Example SOW (Language Development MA Fashion Design Management)
Teaching and assessment in HE has traditionally focused on the cognitive rather than the affective (Shepherd, 2007). The Language Development scheme of work began with an analysis of learning outcomes and unit briefs through the lens of ‘cognitive domains’ (Bloom et al., 1956; Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001; Krathwohl, 2002) – see example scheme of work above (fig. 1). However, the seminar skills lessons leaned more towards encouraging learners to participate in group ‘seminar’ interaction with a focus on affective domains (Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia,1964), practising systemic functional language (Matthiesen and Halliday, 1997),‘connecting features of language with the social actions with which they correlate’ (Ding and Bruce, 2017, p. 70) whilst emphasising the empathy and mutual inclusion that is required for dialogic learning to take place (Friere, 2005, p. 90).
Translanguaging optimizes the potential for communication (Garcia, 2009, p.140), benefits both L1 and L2 speakers: a lack of worldview awareness where mastery of our native tongue, ‘in turn masters us’ (Fantini, 1989, p. 2). Our mediation of the world, being exposed to other languages may expand this view and aid participation with other cultural groups (Ibid, pp.2-3). This mediation regards learners as social agents focus on meaning making and communicating beyond linguistic and cultural barriers; all mediation relying on collaborative processes (CE, 2022). Albaba (2025, p. 2) proposes the ‘concept of linguistic repertoire,’ which focuses not purely on students’ performance in English but views their existing language ‘as cognitive tools that can scaffold both content learning and language development.’
My intervention therefore attempts to bring the multilingualism in the classroom into focus through viewing this as a pedagogically resourceful and legitimate part of classroom practice which promotes ‘greater linguistic, epistemic and culturally (more) open inclusion’ (Odeneyi, 2022, p. 5). The ‘rhetorical power’ of ‘reimagining’ conversations in the HE space goes beyond teaching and learning (Ibid, p. 7), and this study aims to support both classroom practice, peer behaviours and even institutional change.
Figure 2. Translanguaging fashion and communication
The intervention involves the procedure of activating schemata – contextualizing key terms: fashion, communication, sustainability, narrative – through students saying and writing the words in their L1 alongside the English forms (see example figure 2 above). The qualitative research aims to evaluate, from a student perspective, how this procedure could affect inclusivity, motivation and attendance for this non-compulsory class. However, it is a procedure which I feel could equally be explored in other teaching contexts across the university, forming the next iteration of the action research cycle (see figure 3).
Figure 3. Action Research Cycle: Making Languages Visible at UAL
Albaba, M.B. (2025) ‘Proposing a linguistic repertoires perspective in multilingual higher education contexts,’ Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (36)
Anderson, L. W., and Krathwohl, D. R. (2001) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Complete Edition. New York: Longman.
Bloom, B.S., Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H. and Krathwohl, D.R., (1956) ‘Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals.’ Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. pp. 1103-1133 New York: Longman.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991). Language & symbolic power, J. Thompson (ed) (trans. G. Raymond & M. Adamson). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.’ Stanford Law Review 43 (6), pp.1241-1299
Ding, A., and Bruce, I. (2017) The English for Academic Purposes Practitioner: Operating on the Edge of Academia. Springer
Fantini, A.E. (1989) ‘Language and Worldview’ Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 2-2: this paper was presented in Ottawa, October 7–10, 1988, at the Association’s Thirteenth Annual Conference, “Towards a Global Civilization.”
Friere, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Opressed: 30th Anniversary Edition, (Originally published 1970): New York: Continuem
García, Ofelia (2009). ‘Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century.’ In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 128-145
Krathwohl, D.R. (2002) ‘A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview’ Theory Into Practice, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 212-218 Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1477405 (Accessed 11 February, 2025)
Retentionof Language Development (LD)students atLondon College of Fashion (LCF)
Translation, MediationandCognition
Inclusivity in the “international” multi-cultural, multi-lingual university space.
Contextualization
Regarding my own positionality, and ontology, I am cognizant of my relative privilege – as a white man in my late 40s living in the capital city of an advanced capitalist economy in the Global North, not to mention the fact that I speak English as a first language – I am, ostensibly, close to the apex of the power pyramid.
However, the murder of Steven Lawrence in Eltham SE London 1993, the consequence of the everyday street level racism of the 1980s and 1990s, and the demonstration that racism permeated institutions and social structures, provoked my belief in anti-racism (Kendi, 2019). “White privilege” often confused with wealth and power, being the “absence of having to live with the consequences of racism” (C4, 2020). I remember vividly the aftermath, the faces of his killers, assured that the system would protect them from justice. The murder eventually resulted in the Macpherson Report (1999), with the promise of “a pivotal moment in the advance of race equality in Britain” (Gillborn et al., 2017, pp. 848-849).
Racism involves both ideological and practical subordination (Golash- Borza, 2016), the synthesis of prejudice and power structures to sustain the dominance of privilege; “white supremacy” being a system which grants protections and power (Saad, 2020). Racism is perhaps less about the measure of social characteristics than the relationship between the dominant and the subordinate (Bhavnani, Mizra and Meeto, 2005), can be covert (Coates and Morrison, 2011), and becomes institutionalized when organizations fail to provide “an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin” (MacPherson, 1999, para 6.34). Inequalities may emerge unintentionally (Banaji, Fiske & Massey, 2021) and, in the HE context, examples of systemic and structural racial inequality include gaps in award, retention and progression, and differing experiences of “othering” (Advance HE, 2021 – also see Holmes (2025a) blog post on race).
Fig 1. Percentage Continuation by Ethnicity (5 way). (UAL, 2025)
UAL data (see example figure 1) is useful in analyzing disparities among home students, however my intervention focuses, primarily, on a demographic, which must also be addressed reflexively regarding race and class. Chinese students axiologically represent global socio- economic superiority over home students given the price tag of their tuition fees being at least 100% more than their home student counterparts. The intersectional lens of social class, overlooked in the breakdown of data, and potentially a factor in the perception and treatment of Chinese students, ironically given the logic of disenfranchisements in Crenshaw’s (1991) thesis of intersectionality.
Anecdotally, Chinese students themselves have indicated their cognizance of socio- economic class superiority over home students. This is further compounded by the data collected regarding different racial groups being orientated by the requirements of the 2010 Equality Act (Gov.UK, 2023), international students absent via the intersectional lenses afforded to the analysis of home students. There is no specific data about the actual number of Chinese students at UAL, yet it is common knowledge that they make up the vast proportion of international students.
One struggle for (non-compulsory) LD is attendance, and one potential factor affecting this may be perceptions around inclusivity and identity. It is a conundrum that through the universal offer, those who are in most need of support may feel intimidated by more competent speakers (including L1) and are then less inclined to attend.
In the multicultural, multilingual space of the LD classroom, Chinese students will usually all sit together, this is understandable from the perspective of a shared language and identity, and not surprising with over 150,000 Chinese nationally, 90,000 of whom are postgraduates, that many should end up spending a lot of time with other Chinese students (Ebel, 2024, p.7). These students disclose that they “want to integrate better” and diversify friendship groups but feel unable to do this; often citing that they feel like they are being treated as sources of revenue (“cash cows”) rather than as valued members of the community (Ibid).
A critical incident observed during a presentation workshop illustrated this exclusivity. There were 8 students – all female – 7 home (mainly white – but one black British) and one Chinese. The Chinese student sat alone at the front, so I asked the student to sit with the others so that she could participate in group work. However, the home students worked together and still excluded the Chinese student. The refusal of the home students to be inclusive – struck me as being something endemic within the university. This student will be reluctant to repeat the experience – affecting attendance and learning. Students in HE do not acknowledge these microaggressions as being racism, although a deeper exploration reveals that this denial is rooted in the lack of discourse around “‘anti-Asian racism,” and may be obscured and complicated by intersections “with other power axes such as gender” (Yu et al. 2023, p.1700). The exclusion of the student was based on their racialized -“othered” characteristic. Central to this identity is the language barrier, although it is the plurality of languages that may hold the key to building an intercultural space and the mediation of worldviews, not restricted to the acquisition of the hegemonic (colonial) language: English.
Translanguaging and Paraphrasing
Translanguaging is the act of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of “autonomous languages,” to optimize the potential for communication (Garcia, 2009, p.140). However, as Friere (2005, p.90) notes, dialogue cannot exist when one or both parties lack humility. This means that teachers must foster a space where mutual inclusion can occur.
Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic discourse, both in the production of writing and speaking, for several reasons. AI and machine translation enables generic product but lacks process: the cognitive linguistic synthesis of academic voices. In the context of HE, it is this process which enables students to demonstrate understanding of ideas and discourse, and crucially, enable autonomous learning. It also offers opportunities to explore how the differences between language systems can reveal the plurality of paradigmatic world views. The relationship between culture and language is deeply rooted in how language reflects perspective, where the plurality of ideas results from the plurality of languages in use (Ponorac, 2022).
A “worldview lack of awareness of our own language and language use arises from the fact that as we master our native tongue, it in turn masters us” (Fantini, 1989, p.2). This “Linguistic determinism” can be defined as the system through which we understand and mediate the world and individuals exposed to a second language may develop an expanded vision of the world, facilitating participation with other cultural groups, “expanding qualitatively our social possibilities” (Ibid, pp.2-3). This mediation also has cognitive, social, and pragmatic benefits for first language (L1) speakers of English in engaging in this collaboration in the LD classroom. Learners as social agents focus on meaning making and communicating beyond linguistic and cultural barriers; all mediation relies on collaborative processes (CE, 2022).
Reflection, Action and Evaluation
Through peer discussion I have gained more confidence with the validity of the idea, for example PG Cert Fellow Jeff highlighted how the experience of “non-native” (L2) speakers of English at UAL resonates with Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of linguistic capital, privileging English – and English speakers – within academic and societal “markets,” marginalizing those who are not. My tutor Kwame also gave me inspiration with how to frame this intervention through examples to my students – in the Ghanaian language of his parents there are no differentiations between pronouns, as opposed to English (where recently this has become a highly politicized issue); drawing on another peer example, the diverse language of colours also provides a way into understanding the relationship between how language(s) can inform our world view.
Fig 2. Language Development LCF Speaking and Listening Class: Student writing Chinese translations of key words from discussion (May 2025)
Fig. 3. Language Development_BSc Fashion Management Class: Student writing Chinese translation of keyword for analysis (May 2025)
I have afforded opportunities for students (only Chinese thus far) to write translations for key words and terms in the whiteboard/ flip chart (a tactile typography outside the digital space). This not only brings the visualization of culture through the visual representation of language into the foreground, but also provides the opportunity to explain the complexity of meanings, and how this might affect our world view (see Figure 2. and 3). Thus far this has been an illuminating process in which students’ culture and language is not hidden but forms a meaningful part of the learning process. This metalinguistic level of discussion also has potential for first language speakers in understanding how language informs their world view, although they will also need to be supported in the metalinguistics required for this discourse.
My idea is based on two activities/ procedures – firstly, using the above to allow students to provide a translation then present their evaluation of the different ways that languages interpret this word, ad hoc during lessons. Secondly, drawing on Intercultural Communication Zine workshops – (see figure 4 and 5) – also see Ramejkis (n.d.) and Holmes (2025b), a process of collaborative interaction and production of Zines or posters, where real collaboration and cultural sharing can occur. This is also intended to be a means of exploring dialectical variation both lexico-grammatically and phonemically, applicable to the range of contexts within the English-speaking body of students.
Fig 4. Welcome Week Zine Workshop Chelsea College of Arts (Autumn 2024)
Fig 5. Example of student Zine created at CCW Welcome Week Zine workshops (Autumn 2024)
This intervention will be evaluated cross sectionally using an ethnographic approach of student interactions and qualitative surveys (Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis, 2023) which could yield insights into student’s perceptions about both the value of the activities and their attitudes towards speakers of other languages – and through the analysis of the collaborative products themselves.
The procedure aims to practice mediation, paraphrasing, translanguaging and expansion of world view, in the production of a cross-cultural artefact – exploring both denotation and connotation in the representation and cognitive significance of language. In 2025/26 I aim to foster a community of discourse where a plurality of cultures and languages can be seen as a gift rather than a burden to the learning experiences of all students.
Word count 1650 (not including title, figure captions and reference list)
List of Figures
1. Percentage Continuation by Ethnicity (5 way). (UAL, 2025)
2. Language Development LCF Speaking and Listening Class: Student writing Chinese translations of key words from discussion (May 2025)
3. Language Development_BSc Fashion Management Class: Student writing Chinese translation of keyword for analysis (May 2025)
4. Welcome Week Zine Workshop Chelsea College of Arts (Autumn 2024)
5. Examples of student Zines created at CCW Welcome Week Zine workshops (Autumn 2024)
Banaji, M. R., Fiske. ,S. T., and Massey, D. S. (2021) ‘Systemic racism: individuals and interactions, institutions and society’ Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 82.
Bhavnani, R, Mirza, H S, and Meetoo, V. (2005). Tackling the roots of racism: Lessons for success. Bristol: Policy Press
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Edited by J.B. Thompson. Translated by G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press
C4 – Channel 4. (2020) The School That Tried to End Racism. [Online}. Youtube. 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg (Accessed on 5th June 2025)
Coates, R. D., and Morrison, J. (2011) ‘Covert Racism Theories, Institutions, and Experiences Series: Studies’ in Critical Social Sciences, Volume: 32.
Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.’ Stanford Law Review 43 (6), pp.1241-1299
Ebel, C.P., (2024) ‘How can UK universities improve their strategies for tackling integration challenges among Chinese students?’ Higher Education Policy Institute –HEPI Report 183
Fantini, A.E. (1989) ‘Language and Worldview’ Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 2-2: this paper was presented in Ottawa, October 7–10, 1988, at the Association’s Thirteenth Annual Conference, “Towards a Global Civilization.”
Friere, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Opressed: 30th Anniversary Edition, (Originally published 1970): Noew York: Continuem
García, O. (2009) ‘Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century.’ In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 128-145
Gillborn, D., Demack, S., Rollock, N., and Warmington, P. (2017) ‘Moving the goalposts: Education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap’ British Educational Research Journal Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 848–874 DOI: 10.1002/berj.3297
Golash-Boza, T. (2016) ‘A critical and comprehensive theory of race and racism’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(2): 129– 41.
Yu, J., Rai, R., Lim, M.A., and Li, H. (2023) ‘The post‑racial myth: rethinking Chinese university students’ experiences and perceptions of racialised microaggressions in the UK.’ Higher Education (2024): 88:1695–1710 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01126-5
This intervention aims to deal with two issues which have become manifest in my experience as a Language Development Tutor at LCF (and through my previous work with LD at other colleges) – 1: The use of machine translation in mediating academic communication and 2: the need for greater inclusivity among peers in the “international” university space.
The need for greater cultural inclusivity in the university
Fantini (2022) suggests that language is not merely about teaching “new ways to say old things (i.e., new symbols for old thoughts) rather it aims to aid the discovery, via new language systems, of new ways of “perceiving, of classifying and categorizing, of interacting, and to new ways of thinking about the world.” However, as I will argue, this process is not restricted to the acquisition of the hegemonic (colonial) language: English. “Translanguaging” is the act of accessing different linguistic features or various modes” of what are described as “autonomous languages,” to optimize the potential for communication (Garcia, 2009, p.140). However, as Friere (2005, p.90) notes dialogue cannot exist when one or both parties lack humility.
What happens in the multicultural, multilingual space of the classroom at LCF is that Chinese students (the predominant international student group) will usually all sit together, this is understandable from the perspective of a shared language – and a shared identity. It is not surprising, with over 150,000 Chinese nationally, 90,000 of whom are postgraduates, that many should end up spending a lot of time with other Chinese students (Ebel, 2024, p.7). These students disclose that they ‘want to integrate better’ and diversify friendship groups but feel unable to do this; and they often cite that the feel like they are being treated as sources of revenue (a “cash cow”) ‘rather than as valued members of the community (Ibid).
One example of exclusion, I observed a few weeks ago, was when delivering part one of a presentation workshop for BA Fashion Marketing. There were 8 students – 7 home (mainly white – but one black British) and one Chinese. The Chinese student sat alone at the front, there was a space among the other students on the back table, so I asked the student to sit with the others so that she could participate in the peer-based activities. However, when these activities began the home students worked together in pairs and small groups whilst the Chinese student was excluded. Whilst I tried to involve the student, the refusal of the home students to include the Chinese student – which may have required some adaptation, and indeed empathy – struck me as being something endemic within the university, and I imagine that this student will be very reluctant to repeat the experience of the workshop in part two– affecting attendance and learning. Students in HE do not acknowledge these microaggressions as being racism, although a deeper exploration reveals that this denial is tooted in the lack of discourse around “‘anti-Asian racism,” and may be obscured and complicated by intersections “with other power axes such as gender” (Yu et al. 2023, p.1700)
Had there been other Chinese students, then most likely these students would have worked together. My reason for moving the student was purely to facilitate communicative activities, however the opportunity for mediated cross-cultural communication exists, and would, in my view, benefit all students. What I observed in the above was, in my evaluation, an “othering” of the Chinese student, and the exclusion was based on this “othered” characteristic. Of course, central to this cultural identity is the language barrier, although it is the plurality of languages that may hold the key to building an intercultural space and the mediation of worldviews.
Paraphrasing and mediating as a cognitive process.
Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic discourse, both in the production of writing and speaking, for several reasons. However, in the era of AI, this is a productive task which can be completed automatically by machine. This enables product, i.e. achieving what appears on the surface to be an academic text to the genre, but lacks the essential process: the cognitive linguistic synthesis of academic voices, i.e. that of the secondary source author and that of the primary researcher writer. In the context of HE it is this process which enables the student to understand, and demonstrate understanding of ideas and discourse, and crucially, through this synthetic process, enable autonomous learning.
However, there are significant barriers regarding the ability to do this for students who are using English as a second or other language. The process of paraphrasing, and indeed writing per se is often mediated through translation tools, this also risks subverting the cognitive processing on the part of the student; in as much as the text is translated into the first language, synthesized into the first language writing produced by the student, and then translated back into English by machine. However, this does offer some opportunity to investigate how a linguistic difference between one language and another reveal a plurality of cultural perspectives and paradigmatic world view, interpretations of ideas, and on the discourse around them. The relationship between culture and language is deeply rooted in how language reflects cultural perspective, where a plurality of ideas result from plurality of languages in use (Ponorac, 2022).
Fantini (1989, p.2) asserts that a “worldview lack of awareness of our own language and language use arises from the fact that as we master our native tongue, it in turn masters us.” This “Linguistic determinism” can be defined as the system through which we understand and mediate the world and individuals exposed to a second language may develop an expanded vision of the world, facilitating participation with other cultural groups, “expanding qualitatively our social possibilities” (Ibid, pp.2-3). The mediation of languages also has cognitive, social, and pragmatic benefits.
Mediation is one of the four modes in which the CEFR model organizes communication. Learners seen as social agents engage in receptive, productive, interactive or mediation activities or, more frequently, in a combination of two or more of them. While interaction stresses the social use of language, mediation encompasses and goes beyond that by focusing on making meaning and/or enabling communication beyond linguistic or cultural barriers. Both types of mediation rely on collaborative processes. (CE, 2022)
Proposed Intervention
I have begun talking to Chinese students about their experiences and behaviours (and I am also interested in learning the perceptions and behaviours of the home and other students). I have also afforded opportunities (in Chinese only classes thus far) to get students to write translations for key words and terms in the whiteboard/ flip chart (a more tactile form of typography and opportunity to step outside the digital space). This not only brings the visualization of culture through the visual representation of the language into the foreground, but then provides the opportunity to explain the complexity of meanings, and how this might affect our world view (see Fig 1. and 2). Thus far this has been an illuminating process in which students’ culture and language is not hidden but forms a meaningful part of the learning process. This metalinguistic level of discussion also has potential for first language speakers in understanding how language informs their world view, although they will also need to be supported in the metalinguistics required for this discourse (this is where the expertise of Language Development can support all learners at UAL).
Fig 1. Language Development LCF Speaking and Listening Class: Student writing Chinese translations of key words from discussion (May 2025)
Fig. 2 Language Development_BSc Fashion Management Class: Student writing Chinese translation of keyword for analysis – (May 2025)
My formative idea for this is based on two activities/ procedures – firstly, using the above to allow students to provide a translation then present their evaluation of the different ways that languages interpret this word, ad hoc during lessons. Secondly, drawing on an idea which I came across working with Adam Ramejkis on the Intercultural Communication programme on Zine workshops (see fig 2 and 3. also see Ramejkis (n.d.) and Holmes (2025) blog for more details about Zines) in order to offer an opportunity for cross cultural collaboration, mediation and exploration of identity and perception. This process utilizes interaction and production outside of the digital space, where real collaboration and cultural sharing can occur. It is also intended to be a means of exploring dialectical variation both lexico-grammatically and phonemically, through utilizing synthetic and IPA (EnglishClub, 2025) phonological tools) which is applicable to the range of contexts within the English speaking body of students.
Fig 3. Welcome Week Zine Workshop Chelsea College of Arts Autumn 2024.
In sum, the procedure aims to practice mediation, paraphrasing, translanguaging and expansion of world view perception, in the production of a cross-cultural artefact – which focuses on exploring both denotation and connotation in the representation and cognitive significance of language. Through doing this I want to foster a community of discourse where a plurality of cultures and languages can be seen as a gift rather than a burden to the learning experiences of all students.
Fantini, A.E. (1989) ‘Language and Worldview’ Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 2-2: this paper was presented in Ottawa, October 7–10, 1988, at the Association’s Thirteenth Annual Conference, “Towards a Global Civilization.”
Friere, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Opressed: 30th Anniversary Edition, (Originally published 1970): Noew York: Continuem
García, Ofelia (2009). ‘Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century.’ In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 128-145
Yu, J., Rai, R., Lim, M.A., and Li, H. (2023) ‘The post‑racial myth: rethinking Chinese university students’ experiences and perceptions of racialised microaggressions in the UK.’ Higher Education (2024): 88:1695–1710 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01126-5
