Finding Voice Before AI: A Translingual Personal Narrative of Identity and Literacy Assignment for Multilingual College Writers
Introduction
As generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes writing and writing instruction, multilingual educators, emerging writers, and students face heightened pressure to rely on automated tools before developing confidence in their own linguistic and cultural voices; as Toncelli and Kosta (2025) note, “advanced writers seem to trust their own voice over AI, while emerging writers trust AI over their own voice” (para. 1). As a multilingual writer and someone who uses English as an additional language, I felt the urgency to address this issue in my first-year writing class at a midwestern U.S. university, where most students use English as their first language, with a few using it as an additional one. Both groups are increasingly using AI tools to develop efficiency which sometimes and unfortunately risks the loss of their voices.
To address this, I designed an “Identity Narrative” assignment to honor everyone’s identity, which is a rhetorical embodiment of every writer. Autoethnographic narrative assignment is not new in our field. While Yazan’s (2019) Critical Autoethnography Narrative assignment foregrounds language teacher identity in teacher education, and other scholars conceptualize the relationship between professional identity and sociocultural identities (Duff & Uchida,1997), my Identity Narrative assignment “aims to help writing students develop their own unique writing voice and style while enhancing their genre awareness and rhetorical understanding” (Banu, p. 2, 2025). While English-first students may not always recognize the diversity within their own English usage, all students benefit from reflecting on how their cultural and linguistic experiences shape their writing. At first, this assignment served as an additional narrative assignment besides the traditional literacy narrative assignment.
Later, realizing how deeply students’ identities and literacies are connected and shaped by each other, I merged the identity and literacy narrative assignments into a single Personal Narrative that prioritizes students’ voice and reflection before AI-mediated writing. This integrated approach demonstrates how connecting identity and literacy in a single narrative fosters multilingual writers’ agency, confidence, and transferable skills while encouraging thoughtful, reflective engagement with both language and culture.
As an advocate for AI literacy and critical engagement with AI tools, I continuously adjust my instruction to help students develop these skills. While students are encouraged to develop critical AI literacy in my class, they are not allowed or even required to use AI tools to complete this assignment, no matter how efficiently AI completes a task. As Gratton (2024) points out, AI may accelerate learning, but it cannot replace the development that shapes expertise, judgment, and identity. She writes, “Acceleration increases output; development transforms identity. The two are not interchangeable” (para. 7). Also, as Graham (2025) emphasizes that writing is a “thinking tool,” relying solely on AI while writing a personal narrative risks diminishing the critical thinking skills that differentiate humans from machines. Hence, my goal is to help students find their unique writerly voice before integrating AI in our class. In the following sections, I share why I designed the Personal Narrative of Identity and Literacy assignment, how I designed and taught this assignment in my first-year writing class, and what I have observed in the process.
Pedagogical Rationale
Most people in the world speak more than one language or, at a minimum, multiple variations of a language, making them multidialectical. To support both multilingual and multidialectical students, I adapt to a growing paradigm of writing instruction called “translingual approach,” which “sees difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading and listening” (Horner et al., 2011, p. 303). This perspective informs my approach, emphasizing that students’ linguistic repertoires, whether multiple languages or dialects, are assets to leverage in the writing classroom.
The translingual approach does not focus on the number of languages or language varieties, rather it focuses on “openness and inquiry” people take towards language differences (Horner et al., 2011, p. 312). Even students traditionally considered monolingual are linguistically pluralistic as their vernaculars carry cultural and rhetorical knowledge that can enrich their writing (Canagarajah, 2006). Valuing the varieties of language that matter to students can reduce inhibitions against dominant codes (Canagarajah, 2006). This principle directly informed my design of the Personal Narrative assignment that situates multilingual literacies as central to students’ identity and writing development.
In U.S. first-year writing courses, literacy narratives are widely used to help students explore their literacy histories, but they often do not explicitly address students’ identities (Banu, 2025). In contrast, identity narratives center on students’ cultural, linguistic, and social identities but may neglect connections to literacy development. When I first implemented a section for multilingual college writers, I noticed that students engaged deeply with personal identity but often did not reflect on how these identities shaped their literacy practices.
To bridge this gap, I merged the Identity Narrative with the Literacy Narrative. This integrated design situates literacy practices and identity as inseparable and complementary, inviting students to engage in deeper self-reflection, rhetorical decision-making, and metacognitive awareness of their writing processes. Through this merged assignment, multilingual writers explore how their multiple linguistic resources inform both who they are and how they write. Students are encouraged to use their variations of English or other languages as a storytelling tool to foreground their linguistic and cultural identities. By centering students’ linguistic and cultural identities as resources, the assignment operationalizes translingual pedagogy, fostering student agency and confidence while emphasizing the rhetorical power of their voice and resisting standardization of English.
In addition, I introduce a No-AI scale for this assignment, adapted from an AI-assessment scale by Perkins et al. (2024). This scale encourages students to rely on their own judgment and writerly skills before using AI tools. By situating this assignment at the No-AI scale, students develop their voices intentionally, reflecting on how their multilingual literacies intersect with personal and academic narratives. In the following paragraphs, I describe the assignment and its implementation in my course in detail.
Assignment Description
The Personal Narrative of Identity and Literacy assignment engages students in exploring the intersection of identity and literacy, reflecting on how various aspects of their identities have shaped their literacy development. The primary objective is to help students recognize and articulate their unique voices, understand the interplay between identity and literacy, and develop reflective, critical, and rhetorical skills that are transferable across contexts. Students are encouraged to examine multiple dimensions of identity, including cultural, familial, linguistic, and educational influences, and connect these to their literacy histories.
Pedagogical Implementation
The assignment is scaffolded over the first five weeks of the course to support progressive skill development. In Week 1, students are introduced to the assignment and begin reflecting on their own experiences with language and literacy. They learn about the AI-assessment scale and read about code-meshing and translingual writing. They explore questions about identity, culture, and how these shape writing practices. This initial stage sets the groundwork for self-awareness and reflection. In Week 2, students engage with key readings, including a chapter from the assigned textbook, Lisa Arnold’s (2019) Writing Critically, and Deborah Brandt’s (1997) The Sponsors of Literacy. These readings provide conceptual frameworks for understanding literacy as socially situated and influenced by multiple cultural and personal forces. In Week 3, students analyze sample narratives from the textbook and also from open-access digital sources such as articles from Lit Hub and speeches from TED Talks. They participate in discussions about narrative structure, voice, and rhetorical strategies of other translingual writers. This week emphasizes how narrative techniques can be used to represent both identity and literacy development effectively.
As we move to Week 4, students produce a first draft of their Personal Narrative and participate in structured peer review sessions. I use a shoulder-partner model to guide peer review sessions to encourage active discussion and rhetorical listening. While I usually conduct anonymous peer reviews in my writing classes, this model works particularly well for this assignment. Students sit next to a partner and talk through their drafts, discussing how their identities and literacy practices shape their work and identifying the aspects of their projects where they need the most feedback. This approach also fosters more meaningful dialogue, helps students see connections between their own and others’ literacies, and supports collaborative reflection on both contents. Based on the peer feedback, they revise their draft and meet individually with me for a 10-minute conference to receive targeted feedback in Week 5. They then submit a revised second draft, which integrates insights from both peer and instructor feedback. Throughout all five weeks, students only engage with their peers, the instructor, and themselves. There is no AI intervention. Hence, the voice they set at the beginning of the semester is the voice before AI.
My Reflection: How It Worked (or not)
As I teach this assignment, I have noticed that this Personal Narrative helps students develop enhanced self-awareness of how their identities shape their literacy practices, allowing them to recognize how culture, language, and experience influence their writing. It also helps students to strengthen their narrative and rhetorical skills so they can craft engaging and coherent personal narratives. Many students gain confidence in using their multilingual and multidialectal resources as rhetorical assets, positioning their linguistic repertoires as tools rather than constraints. Finally, by situating this assignment at a No-AI scale, students could prioritize self-generated ideas and reflection before using AI tools, reinforcing independent critical thinking and strengthening their unique writerly voices.
However, this experience has revealed an important tension. Although I encouraged students to avoid AI tools, even for brainstorming, a few students shared during one-on-one conferences that they had used them. They explained that it felt easier to “talk to” ChatGPT and generate ideas than to seek support from the writing center or peers outside class hours. This insight prompted me to reconsider the role of AI in my pedagogy. While AI can contribute to linguistic and cultural flattening, it may also function as an accessibility tool for students who need additional time, flexibility, or low-pressure self-paced spaces to begin their thinking. Recognizing this complexity has encouraged me to think more critically about how to guide students in using AI responsibly without undermining the development of their independent voices.
Transferability and Final Thoughts
I designed this Personal Narrative assignment as a flexible, inclusive unit that can be adapted to a variety of institutional contexts, including two-year colleges, ESL programs, or mixed-level writing courses. Its focus on identity, literacy, and multilingual repertoires makes it relevant wherever students bring diverse linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences to the classroom. Because the assignment is scaffolded—moving from reflection to drafting, peer review, and instructor feedback—it can be shortened or extended depending on the time available or the depth of engagement desired. Because the assignment encourages students to draw on their own linguistic and cultural resources, it supports an inclusive approach to writing instruction that values students’ right to their own language.
Overall, this merged assignment addresses the limitations I observed when treating identity and literacy as separate constructs. It aligns with translingual pedagogy by resisting linguistic homogenization and advocating for holistic, student-centered approaches to writing instruction (Canagarajah, 2006; Horner et al., 2011). At the same time, it positions students to navigate emerging AI-mediated writing contexts with a strong foundation in reflective, agentive, and transferable writing practices.
I believe this assignment model is both adaptable and sustainable. It can be scaled to different class sizes, time frames, and student populations while maintaining its focus on reflective, critical, and identity-conscious writing. It demonstrates how a carefully designed, translingual, and voice-centered narrative assignment can support multilingual students in becoming confident, thoughtful writers capable of navigating complex social, academic, and technological landscapes.
Jainab Tabassum Banu, PhD, has completed her PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture at North Dakota State University. Her pedagogical research focuses on multilingual writing, translingual pedagogy, and AI-informed writing instruction. She is interested in designing reflective, voice-centered writing instruction that supports students’ literacy and identity development.
References
Arnold, L. (2019). Writing critically: genres and rhetorical choices. Fountainhead Press.
Banu, J. T. (2025). Identity narrative assignment: How writing about students’ identities shapes their writerly voice. Xchanges, 19(1), 1–14. https://xchanges.org/identity-narrative-assignment-19-1
Brandt, D. (1997). The sponsors of literacy. National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement, University at Albany, State University of New York. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-ED-PURL-gpo135402/pdf/GOVPUB-ED-PURL-gpo135402.pdf
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Gratton, L. (2025, December 22). AI is changing how we learn at work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2025/12/ai-is-changing-how-we-learn-at-work
Graham, S. (2024, November 7). Why should we teach writing in the age of Artificial Intelligence? McGraw Hill. https://medium.com/inspired-ideas-prek-12/why-should-we-teach-writing-in-theage-of-artificial-intelligence-c49c50300584
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Perkins, M., Furze, L., Roe, J., & MacVaugh, J. (2024). The AI Assessment Scale. https://aiassessmentscale.com/
Toncelli, R., & Kosta, I. (2025). “Our voice is unique:” Integrating generative AI into multilingual writing instruction. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 29(3). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.29115int2
Yazan, B. (2019). Identities and ideologies in a language teacher candidate’s autoethnography: Making meaning of storied experience. TESOL Journal, 10(4), Article e500. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.500