Abstract
The proportion of multilingual individuals in the United States is growing, and research suggests individuals who serve as language brokers/interpreters demonstrate advanced literacy and communication skills; specifically, language brokers quickly gain an understanding of institutional processes and accompanying vocabulary and also excel at comprehending and managing the expectations of their audience. This essay argues university instructors can encourage monolingual students to develop similar skills through “code brokering” instruction in first-year English courses. By focusing on “code,” such as style shifting, nonverbal techniques, or other means, monolingual students recognize, appreciate, and enhance their own interpretation skills. This essay reviews and analyzes how students in a first-year English class responded to a unit introducing code-brokering concepts and discusses ideas to include code brokering in a first-year English course.