Studies on translanguaging of multilingual students have turned their attention to teachable strategies in classrooms. This study is based on the assumption that it is possible to learn from students' translanguaging strategies while developing their proficiency through a dialogical pedagogy. Based on a classroom ethnography, this article describes the translanguaging strategies of a Saudi Arabian undergraduate student in her essay writing. Her strategies are classified through thematic coding of multiple forms of data: drafts of essay, journals, classroom assignments, peer review, stimulated recall, and member check. The strategies are of 4 types: recontextualization strategies, voice strategies, interactional strategies, and textualization strategies. The study describes how the feedback of the instructor and peers can help students question their choices, think critically about diverse options, assess the effectiveness of their choices, and develop metacognitive awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Codemeshing in Academic Writing: Identifying Teachable Strategies of Translanguaging

The article traces the Welsh origins of “translanguaging” from the 1980s to the recent global use, analysing the development and extension of the term. It suggests that the growing popularity of the term relates to a change in the way bilingualism and multilingualism have ideologically developed not only among academics but also amid changing politics and public understandings about bilingualism. The original pedagogic advantages of a planned use of translanguaging in pedagogy and dual literacy are joined by an extended conceptualisation that perceives translanguaging as a spontaneous, everyday way of making meaning, shaping experiences, and communication by bilinguals. A new conceptualisation of translanguaging is in brain activity where learning is through 2 languages. A tripartite distinction is suggested between classroom translanguaging, universal translanguaging, and neurolinguistic translanguaging. The article concludes with a summary of recent research into translanguaging with suggestions for fut...

Translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond

As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as ‘English language learners,’ in both English as a Second Language and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction and first language literacy is discouraged and undervalued poses unusual challenges for learners whose communicative repertoires encompass translanguaging practices. Drawing on the critical sociolinguistics of globalization and on ethnographic data from US and international educational contexts, we argue via a continua of biliteracy lens that the welcoming of translanguaging and transnational literacies in classrooms is not only necessary but desirable educational practice. We suggest that Obama's current policies on the one hand and our schools' glaring needs on the other offer new spaces to be exploited for innovative programs, curricula, and practices that recogn...

Translanguaging and transnational literacies in multilingual classrooms: a biliteracy lens

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. CLIL involves the use of language-supportive methodologies leading to authentic learning where attention is given to both the topic and the language of instruction. “Achieving this twofold aim calls for the development of a special approach to teaching, in that the nonlanguage subject is not taught in a foreign language but with and through a foreign language” (Eurydice, 2006, p. 8).


Keywords:

bilingualism;
language teaching;
language in the classroom;
methods;
neurolinguistics;
multilingualism

Content and Language Integrated Learning

S or later, as schools move to implement the new Common Core and other forthcoming standards, almost every teacher in the United States will face the challenge of how to support students from homes where English is not the dominant language in meeting subject-matter academic expectations that require increasingly demanding uses of language and literacy in English. In this chapter, I review research that provides potential insights on how “mainstream” teachers might be prepared for responding to this challenge, both in preservice teacher preparation programs and throughout their careers. I argue that efforts to prepare teachers for working with English learners (ELs)1 to engage with increasing language and literacy expectations across the curriculum requires development of pedagogical language knowledge (Galguera, 2011)—not to “teach English” in the way that most mainstream teachers may initially conceive of (and resist) the notion, but rather to purposefully enact opportunities for the development of language and literacy in and through teaching the core curricular content, understandings, and activities that teachers are responsible for (and, hopefully, excited about) teaching in the first place. I review recent literature that presents various approaches to what this knowledge might entail and how teacher preparation and development initiatives might go about fostering it. I conclude by proposing that, in an age of increasing linguistic demands associated with new academic expectations, building teachers’ understanding of language as action (van Lier & Walqui, 2012) could serve as the foundation for preparing them to engage—and support—ELs in both challenging and meaningful academic tasks. As educators begin to navigate a new era of policy reform with new common standards at its heart, there are many uncertainties. As I write, teachers, school

Pedagogical Language Knowledge: Preparing Mainstream Teachers for English Learners in the New Standards Era

Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective, by Ofelia Garcia with contributions by Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, Oxford, UK, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 496 pp., US$99.95 (hardback), ISBN ...

Ellen Johnson

Papers

Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective