Lisa Sinnerton, EAP Teacher, INTO at Queens University, Belfast

How do you explain to a 5-year-old child why her miraculous ability to talk does not work anymore? How do you tell her why you have taken away her growing capacity to express who she is, to say what her needs are, to know how to negotiate meaning and come to understanding—in short, to “be someone” in her new school? As I tried to support such children, I often picked up on their feelings of anxiety, alienation, and sometimes even anger, and asked myself what I could do about it.

This article is a brief account of a translanguaging (TL) approach to providing English language support that I adopted as an English language learner (ELL) teacher in the primary section of an English medium international school. Some of our students join the school either unable to speak any English at all, or with only very limited English. Most of them come from Korea, Japan, France, Russia, Azerbaijan, or Turkey. English as an additional language (EAL) support staff in the primary school work with these students both in the setting of their classroom in a push-in strategy, and in their own classrooms with other EAL students of the same age, in a pull-out format.

In the rest of this article I attempt to explain my understanding of what a TL approach involves, the advantages that have been claimed for it over the two decades or so that it has been developing, how I tried to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach using a very limited set of qualitative assessments, and the extent to which I found the approach seemed to yield positive outcomes.

What Is Translanguaging?

TL is not simply translating or code switching (which would, of course, be impossible for a monolingual teacher). Otheguy, García, and Reid (2015) define the practice of TL as using the speaker’s “full linguistic repertoire without regard to watchful adherence to socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages” (p. 281). Similarly, Woodley and Brown (2016) write, “Students cannot and should not be asked to leave their home language and cultural practices at the door. Instead, the school must allow and encourage students’ full selves to be a part of the teaching and learning process” (p. 203). This means training learners to see the use of their own first language (L1) as a resource for learning rather than as a source of embarrassment or even shame. The further question arising from these descriptions is what exactly TL looks like in terms of the classroom practice of teaching English, or indeed any other language. Celic and Seltzer (2012) suggest that such practice might include

• choosing culturally relevant texts,
• the use of bilingual “identity” texts,
• multicultural displays,
• offering the chance to discuss content in the L1 with a same-language peer prior to completing a TL task,
• multilingual labels and word walls,
• translations of rules and regulations,
• language biographies and passports,
• language objectives, and so forth.

In short, the repertoire of potential strategies that could be labeled TL as defined in this article is as broad as the ingenuity of the teacher implementing them.

Is Translanguaging Effective?

Whatever the sociopolitical rationales for TL, the question still remains: Does the approach work to enhance TL proficiency? One of the most comprehensive metaanalyses of TL was undertaken by Poza (2017), who concluded that, “little scholarship thus far analyzes its programmatic use to support sustained academic growth” (p. 120). The studies that do appear in the literature are typically small scale. One such is an analysis by Velasco and Garcia (2014) of five written texts in which TL was used in the preparatory stages of the young learners’ writing. They found that compared with other approaches, TL had the most potential. Another study by Makalela (2015) with primary school students in South Africa found that when TL took the form of alternating languages for input and output, the strategy was both cognitively and socially beneficial.

TL research has not been confined to English as one of the pairs. Bin Tahir, Saidah, Mufidah, and Bugis (2018) conducted research using an objectively based methodology involving pre and posttests of reading comprehension of Arabic by speakers of Bahasa Indonesia. The researchers reported that TL resulted in reading proficiency gains that were superior to those obtained by a control group. Finally, mention needs to be made of a study by Andersen (2017), not because it offers cogent empirical evidence of the efficacy of TL but rather because it exemplifies the many other studies that tend to offer pedagogical TL strategies without adequate evaluation of their efficacy.

The Social-Emotional Rationale for Translanguaging

One of the strengths of TL and indeed the main reason for its use in addressing the kinds of problems posed at the beginning of this paper is that it can impact the affective elements that hinder or support emergent bilingualism. In setting out his affective filters hypothesis, Krashen (1982) identified several specific affective filters in language learners, including motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. He goes on to state that a teacher’s pedagogical goals must be to not only supply input that students can understand, but to do so in a way that lowers these filters. Krashen (1982) writes, “If the topic being discussed is at all interesting, and if it is comprehensible, much of the pressure normally associated with a language class will be ‘off’, anxiety will be lowered, and acquisition will result” (p. 66). In other words, if the teacher makes their content enjoyable and understandable, for example by encouraging cross-cultural connections, then there is a higher chance that the emergent bilingual will remain on task with respect to the focal skill.

How Effective Were My Translanguaging Practices?

My small-scale research project had twin objectives. The first was to find out whether giving students the opportunity to use their L1s to discuss a TL text had any effect on reading development. This objective was implemented using PROBE 2 Reading Comprehension Assessment (Parkin & Parkin, 2011), a series of texts of parallel difficulty within a given age group but with different content. The second objective was to find out how students felt about being encouraged to use their L1 in class. This affective dimension was addressed by means of personal questionnaires following a short writing task based on picture prompts which had been discussed in the L1 and then in the TL. This was followed later by identity texts written in the students’ L1 (and later translated by proficient senior students) in response to the instruction, “describe your transition into this school and the difficulties you have faced.”

Overall, the students showed better comprehension of the texts they had been able to discuss in their L1, particularly with respect to higher level evaluative and inferential meanings. This may have been because the prior L1 discussion enabled them to share their own experience of the world to achieve a deeper understanding of textual content.

Almost all the students who completed the questionnaire indicated strongly that they felt happier and more comfortable operating in their own language. Moreover, they all felt, in their own eyes at least, that they performed better on English tasks when allowed to access their L1 to discuss topics with fellow students. In writing their identity texts, in their L1, later translated by senior students, they seemed better able to access more nuanced feelings and experiences than when they had been able to respond to the questionnaire only in English. On analysis, several themes seemed salient in almost all the identity text responses:

1. The role of the teacher in providing emotional support was more valued than the teacher’s instructional role.

2. Using the L1 with classmates when possible was highly valued. Conversely, students who did not share an L1 with any other students in the class said they sometimes felt isolated. The teacher needs to bear this in mind when using, for example, an L1 discussion input and second language writing output strategy.

3. Affective factors, such as alienation, fear, anxiety, and loneliness, often in connection with home life or school social life were all referenced much more often than the effectiveness of any teaching methods or the learning process. One student wrote,

I think it would be so much harder for me if my friend wasn’t here who speaks Turkish with me, then it would be so lonely and I would be sad and also we can speak in Turkish to see what the word is in English.

Conclusion

Implementing this TL approach has been an immensely enriching voyage of discovery for me. It was, however, demanding in that it required that I adopt a pragmatic approach to what was happening in my classroom. It also meant that I needed to develop a heightened sensitivity to what my students were bringing with them to the extent that it became no longer “my” classroom but “theirs.” At times I wondered if the babel of languages surrounding me was moving the TL agenda forward, especially when I was trying a TL strategy for the first time. But, then, I reminded myself that ownership of “the TL agenda” had mostly been claimed by me. By letting go of it, I found I could make effective use of the most valuable learning resource of all—the students themselves.

References

Andersen, K. N. (2017). Translanguaging pedagogy in multilingual early childhood classes: A video ethnography in Luxembourg.Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 3(2), 167–183.

Bin Tahir, S. Z., Saidah, U., Mufidah, N., & Bugis, R. (2018). The impact of a translanguaging approach on teaching Arabic reading in a multi-lingual classroom. Ijaz Arabi Journal of Arabic Learning, 1(1).

Celic, C., & Seltzer, K. (2012). Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators. New York: CUNY-NYSIEB Retrieved from https://uiowa.edu/accel/sites/uiowa.edu.accel/files/wysiwyg_uploads/celicseltzer_translanguaging-guide-with-cover-1.pdf

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford, England: Pergamon.

Makalela, L. (2015). Translanguaging as a vehicle for epistemic access: Cases for reading comprehension and multilingual interactions. Per Linguam: a Journal of Language Learning = Per Linguam: Tydskrif vir Taalaanleer, 31(1), 15–29.

Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281–307. doi:10.1515/applirev-2015-0014

Parkin, C., & Parkin, C. (2011). PROBE 2 reading comprehension assessment. Wellington, New Zealand: Triune Initiatives.

Poza, L. (2017). Translanguaging: Definitions, implications, and further needs in burgeoning inquiry. Berkeley Review of Education, 6(2). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8k26h2tp

Velasco, P., & Garcia, O. (2014). Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. The Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education, 37(1), 6–23.