The case for a GELT paradigm in teaching multilingual writing

The Global Englishes (GE) paradigm, including Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT), offers a framework for understanding and teaching second language/multilingual writing in today’s global and digital contexts. GE/GELT recognizes the diversity of English writing, provides tools for developing GE-aware multilingual writers, and presents an important counter to the homogenizing forces of gatekeeping and, most recently, generative AI. GE/GELT is positioned here as an umbrella framework that emphasizes shared ideologies, values, and goals among several areas of research that are often positioned as separate from the field of second language writing: World Englishes, multilingualism, translanguaging, critical language awareness, and English as a lingua franca. In this paper, I argue for a more prominent role of GE/GELT in multilingual writing instruction and outline what a GELT orientation might look like in today’s multilingual writing classroom.