Students learn best when they feel safe, encouraged, heard, and valued in a classroom environment. All of these elements help lower student anxiety- increasing the ability to learn and communicate in the classroom. This is also referred to as the "affective filter." When the affective filter is lowered through effective pedagogy, better learning takes place. Practices that lower the affective filter are unique to every student. However, a few are builidng individual relationships with students, using visual supports, cultural awareness and respresentation, and gradual release of responsibility. 

Supporting a student's home language is an impactful way to lower the affective filter and support L2 aquisition. Not only does the understanding and respect of a student's home language build relationship between educator and student: research shows that maintaining and developing home language skills enhances a students cognitive ability to obtain a second language. Its considered a win win for both parties. Practices to implement home language into the classroom are vast, but include: allowing students to speak in their home language, including billinugal resources into the classroom, and using books in the classroom in a student's home language. 

In order to support multillingual learners, it is essential that educators have a deep understanding of the 5 key stages that multillinugal learners go through as they work through language aquistition. Pre-production refers to the silent period that ML students go through. In this stage students do not speak very much- they mainly observe and listen. Early production is next. Students begin using short words and phrases. In this period, grammar is very limited and so is confidence. Speech Emergence is next. In this stage students can produce simple sentences and can communicate basic ideas and needs. They also may begin to ask basic questions. Intermediate fluency and advanced fluency are when students begin to develop "near- native" fluency. In all of these stages, oral devlopment  is essential to creating students that can effectively communicate.  

Correcting multillingual students can be very tricky- as you are trying to lower the affective filter while also encouraging correct grammar use and language skill. Over correcting can diminish student confidence, while under correcting does not challenge the student. Supportive correction helps support both of these elements. A common tecnique is recasting. Recasting refers to modeling correct language use, whthout explicitly correcting a student's incorrect grammar use. Another common strategy is teaching common phrases and words again that students may be struggling to grasp.