In many high schools in America, it is very common for students to speak more than one language. For multilingual high schoolers, speaking more than one language is just part of everyday school life. Being able to switch between languages shapes how students learn in school and interact with their peers, changing their high school experiences.

According to WIDA (World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment), when multilingual learners are encouraged to use all their ways of talking, being, and knowing to power their thinking and communicating, they engage fully in learning and enrich all learning communities. Students are often given chances to use their different languages in class and with their peers, with many schools offering dual language immersion for highly spoken languages. 

At the same time, multilingual students are expected to learn and be fluent in English at school. English is the main language used in classes and daily communication, which can be challenging for students who speak a different language at home. Many students have to adapt to using English in their classes, which makes their experience harder than the average English speaker’s. 

As stated by GraduateProgram, “English learners are extremely bright, just like their English-speaking classmates. However, they have to work much harder to be successful”.

Students that are more fluent in their home languages tend to need translation in their heads, often pausing during their school work to translate a word from English to their native language to better understand. 

Lizbeth Mendez, a first-generation American junior at Hunter High School, speaks Spanish as her main language. She says, “I tend to translate things from English to Spanish, and sometimes, they don’t mean the same thing. That creates some challenges in school.” 

Vivian Ly, a junior at Taylorsville High School, is also a first-generation American and isn’t completely fluent in English. She says, “I speak Vietnamese pretty often, especially with my family. It’s a big part of my everyday life.” 

In class, she often has to slow down to understand concepts. She comments, “It affects how I translate Vietnamese and English in my head when I’m learning new words. It helps me understand them better.”

Speaking another language can also benefit students in school. Translating can help with comprehension of certain vocabulary; having a definition in two different languages can help students better understand the meaning. 

Mendez says, “I do say that Spanish does help my school performance. In some words that we get taught in school are in Latin, and I can easily understand and make sense of what they mean because I speak Spanish, and I have the advantage of having a better performance.”

There are times when speaking English too often in school can affect how a student speaks at home, instead of the other way around. 

Junior Batoul Soueidan is a second-generation American who learned English from a young age. She is completely fluent in English and says, “I speak my native language, Arabic, at home, but it doesn’t affect how I think in school. I’m more fluent in English than I am in Arabic, so I have zero trouble navigating through things.” Soueidan expresses discontentment over not being fully fluent in Arabic. As English is her main language, Soueidan also adds, “I wish I was more fluent in Arabic because learning English at a young age made me grow distant to my native tongue.” Being bilingual brings multiple perspectives for students at school, but those perspectives can sometimes cause distance in between thinking.

Being multilingual is a different experience for every student, oftentimes affecting both their school lives and personal lives. There’s no denying that being multilingual makes a huge impact on students.