Translanguaging as a multilingual practice

languages need to be understood as resources with which participants make sense of their experience, express their meanings and accomplish their goals,

here identifying translanguaging as a way to achieve this.

Translanguaging as a pedagogical practice was first coined by Williams in 1994 (as referenced in: Baker and Wright, 2017). In his study, bilingual children alternated the languages of input (receptive) and output (productive) in a single lesson. Reading and/or listening in one language (for example, English) and writing and/or speaking about it in another language (for example, Welsh) (Baker and Wright, 2017).

Drawing on the research community (García and Wei, 2014; Conteh, 2015; Creese and Blackledge, 2015; Wei, 2018), the focus of translanguaging is on navigating language practices for communication.

As of today, translanguaging is not a set term and ranges from its application to maximise learning (Baker and Wright, 2017) to the relationship between

language use and performed identities (Creese and Blackledge, 2015) or a

process of knowledge construction” (Wei, 2018, p. 15, italics in original). In other words, this discursive practice constructs knowledge for thinking,

meaning-making and communicating by drawing on all our language resources, in which languages form a unitary language system rather than seeing them as separate entities (Otheguy et al., 2015). In this way, translanguaging underlines

that all sorts of dynamics exist such as its societal implications, as

Otheguy et al. (2015, p. 281) include in their definition of translanguaging:

the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages.

However, the restriction of multilingual practices in the classroom is connected to the monolingual ideology of the framed policy discourses which I have discussed in Chapter 2. Yet, Conteh (2018b, p. 217, emphasis in original)

argues, that translanguaging can “help us to move beyond the constraints of the ‘monolingualising’ ideology of the English education system”. In other words, translanguaging is the opposite of a monolingual education and monolingual teaching. And assuming that a person possesses one language system containing all languages, translanguaging

transgresses and destablizes language hierarchies, and at

the same time expands and extends practices that are typically valued in school and in the everyday world of communities and homes (García and Wei, 2014, p. 68, italics in original).

So, what does a translanguage discourse look like? I came across this form of using multiple languages during my time as a class teacher in London.

However, at this point in my life I was not aware of the concept of

translanguaging. Every week, the pupils received a reading assignment to be performed at home as part of their daily reading homework. The pupils

themselves chose the books they used for these tasks, and so it happened that some children read books in their home language. The assignment, however, was in English and had to be performed in English. Translanguaging occurred

when they first read and comprehended their book in their home language, and then translated the content of the book from their home language into English to answer the questions in English from the assignment. The children drew on all resources and used their full linguistic repertoire and language knowledge.

In my own personal experience when teaching at a primary school prior to beginning my study, my parallel class teacher was not fond of the children practising this as he feared their multiple language use would hinder them in their English language development. Such an example underlines the still prevailing monolingualising attitudes in English literacy lessons and, rather than blaming the teacher, it highlights context, policies and climate in education settings in which multilingualism is still seen as a limiting factor, as I have discussed in Chapter 2.

Translanguaging as a language practice in the multilingual classroom addresses the second sub-question of my research about how children use their language repertoire in the French as a foreign language lesson, in what way languages other than English and French can be explored, which also draws on my third sub-question regarding the teacher’s approach to teaching the foreign language within a multilingual class. This will be discussed in my data analysis in Chapters 6 to 8.

Allowing translanguaging in schools communicates that all languages, and not just the dominant language, are valuable and can be used together for

enhanced communication by children choosing from their language repertoires in order “to express their meanings and perform their identities in the ways most appropriate to them” (Conteh, 2015, p. 197). In this way translanguaging may

serve as a discursive practice for multilingual children in which they draw from one unitary language system and, from that understanding, also see home and school as interconnected sites for learning.

To conclude, translanguaging as a language practice in the classroom can enable the children to draw on their language repertoires to support meaning- making, their understanding and knowledge construction and, in this way, free them of the notion that languages are separate entities.

3.4 Conclusion

In this chapter I have discussed the theoretical underpinnings of my empirical work.

Bearing in mind the discussion in Chapter 2 about policy discourses on language learning in England, the present chapter has discussed language learning within the multilingual classroom from a sociocultural perspective. Bringing these two chapters together, two layers of language learning as well as two contexts emerge: 1. historical and political wrangles regarding the

longstanding issues surrounding multilingualism and foreign language learning and 2. conditions for language learning and language practices within the classroom. While policies are ideological constructs marginalising some pupils’ knowledge whilst valorising others’, classrooms can be regarded as sites for reproducing inequalities in terms of language learning: I have argued how language ideologies, hierarchies and status shape learning, constraining or enabling multilingual learning and constructing monolingual or multilingual identities, individual agency and social membership in identity construction. Children not only have to understand their complex linguistic environment but,

also, they have to act in accordance with their identities in different contexts, drawing on different languages appropriately. In other words, who they are allowed to be is not only dependent on the teacher’s role (encouraging or constraining language use), but also on their availability of identity positions, option and choice. Acknowledging what children bring to their learning and what languages they are encouraged to use at school can value and validate their backgrounds, linguistically and culturally. And in this way, languages become contributions to learning as well as resources for it.

The authors and studies discussed in this chapter are consistent in their views about language learning, in other words applying a sociocultural perspective on learning, acknowledging that both teacher and pupils contribute to learning, learning takes place across contexts, learning cannot be separated from its context and construction of identity is fluid and subject to negotiation or to how pupils position themselves as learners but also how they are positioned by the teacher. However, these aspects, particular to the language classroom in my study and the context I am working in, the connections between multilingualism and foreign language learning, will be discussed and analysed in Chapters 6 to

8.

Further, the theoretical framework above and its implications for my study in the light of the current body of knowledge will be discussed in my concluding

chapter which argues for making use of windows of opportunity for multilingual teaching and learning for teachers, school and policy.

The next two chapters will introduce the methodological framework employed while investigating my questions. The first one, Chapter 4, introduces my methodological considerations for adopting an ethnographic approach.

4 Methodological considerations

In this chapter, I discuss the methodological considerations I employ in this research. As set out in Section 1.2, the purpose of my study is to explore how children’s multilingualism influences the learning of French as a foreign

language. In the following, I endeavour to address this topic using a qualitative approach to research.

This chapter introduces my chosen research methodology, setting out

theoretical considerations for using an exploratory, descriptive and interpretive approach and outlining my rationale for adopting an ethnographic perspective. This includes addressing initial questions or hunches, the setting in which the research takes place, the small scale but in-depth research and the discovery- based approach to data collection. Further, I will address the significance of the self in the research and will provide a rationale for assessing quality in

research. The chapter concludes with a summary of my methodology and addresses the main issues that emerged during my research.