Noticing the Way: Translingual Possibility and Basic Writers

<p>This article presents a pedagogical practice for noticing and negotiating error in a multilingual classroom. Two examples from a classroom are compared to demonstrate the importance of "noticing" in the context of translingual pedagogy. The author's first example offers an attempt to negotiate an error with a multilingual writer without such noticing, compared with a more successful negotiation where noticing plays a part in developing a writer's rhetorical attunement. The concept of noticing derives from second language acquisition (SLA) scholarship in which to notice invites attention to a linguistic feature which may belie a writer's expressed purpose. Without noticing error with their students, teachers dismiss errors' relevance to the impact of writing, and also miss opportunities for an entire class to notice and negotiate sentence-level writing.</p>