User:May erica/Translanguaging

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Translanguaging is a term that can refer to different aspects of multilingualism. It can describe the way bilinguals and multilinguals use their linguistic resources to make sense of and interact with the world around them. It can also refer to a pedagogical approach that utilizes more than one language within a classroom lesson. It is a dynamic process in which multilingual speakers navigate complex social and cognitive demands through strategic employment of multiple languages.

Translanguaging involves issues of language production, effective communication, the function of language, and the thought processes behind language use. Translanguaging is a result of bilingualism. The term is often employed in a pedagogical setting, but also has applications to any situation experienced by multilingual speakers, who constitute most language communities in the world. This includes complex linguistic family dynamics, and the use of code-switching and how that usage relates to one's understanding of their own multilingualism.

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History

Archeological evidence points to Bilingual education going back to at least 4000–5000 years. While most modern research about bilingual education focuses on the later 20th century, there is also research that shows Greek and Latin both being learned by Roman Aristocrats. Modern Bilingual education systems emerged across Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s such as French Immersion in Canada.

Until the mid 20th century, strict language separation was the rule in Bilingual education. The goal was to prevent the first language from influencing any aspect of the second language learning acquisition process. However, this language pedagogy separation started to change due to the urge for revitalizing languages that were in decline.

The ideology behind translanguaging emerged from the evolution of multilingual teaching practices, particularly the practices promoted by Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), an international association designed to advance the quality of English language instruction. The beginnings of bilingual education in the United States asserted the primacy of speech and neglected written language learning. The second language instruction of the 1960s and 70s heavily utilized oral–aural drills, and written portions of the courses were mimetic and repetition oriented, and structure, form, syntax, and grammar were given priority status for learners. In this system there was no focus on actual language use, which led to a lack of knowledge about how language and communication work in real practice.

In the late 1970s and 80s second-language education shifted to focus on the importance of communication and language use for participation in particular discourse communities. However, emphasizing language learning as a means to enter a discourse community was also problematic, as it pressured students to surrender their own language practices in order to become practicing members of the new discourse communities.

Translanguaging as a focus of study first emerged in Bangor, Wales, in the 1980s. It is based on François Grosjean's idea that bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one. Cen Williams and his colleagues were researching strategies of using both Welsh and English in a single lesson in a classroom setting. Cen Williams' Welsh term "trawsieithu" was translated into English as "translanguaging" by their colleague Colin Baker.

Baker (2003) explained that translanguaging means using both languages without separating them into different areas. This is different from what many sociolinguists believe, which is that separating languages is the best way to keep bilingual societies stable (Fishman, 1967). Baker said that using translanguaging in teaching can help people understand better, improve their bilingual skills, and create a bilingual identity. The model suggested that one language be used for input and the other one for output.Williams and Baker showed that this idea could change how we think about bilingualism, which used to be based on using only one language. Welsh teachers realized that separating languages stops bilingual people from using all their language skills and makes them feel like a minority (García, 2009).

The dissemination of the term, and of the related concept, gained traction decades later due in part to published research by Ofelia García, among others. In this context, translanguaging is an extension of the concept of languaging, the discursive practices of language speakers, but with the additional feature of using multiple languages, often simultaneously.

By 2010, linguists were not only focusing on enunciation but on viewing bilingual students as readers, writers, speakers. Translanguaging scholarships started to become visible aiming to understand the multicultural students language and literacy practices.

Translanguaging in Deaf Culture

Language is vital for Deaf children, but many face challenges in learning it, particularly if their parents can hear. Parents are the ones who choose whether their Deaf child will learn spoken or sign language, with most opting for spoken language. Translanguaging in Deaf culture focuses on sensorial accessibility, as translanguaging still exists in Deaf culture; it is just different than translanguaging in non-Deaf speakers. An example of translanguaging in Deaf culture is when a "mixed deaf/hearing family communicates at the dinner table using mouthing, sign-speaking, voice, and signs."^{[citation needed]} Translanguaging can be used prescriptively and descriptively and uses a speaker's entire linguistic range with disregard to the social and political sphere of languages. It also can be seen as the language practices of bilingual speakers. An ongoing issue in the Deaf community is the push for signed languages to be considered minority languages, since deaf speakers have a "sensorial inaccessibility to spoken languages."Parents of bilingual students may develop a set of signs or have very limited skills in their native spoken or sign language. There is also an issue of access to signed languages for deaf children, as for many, this access is compromised. Since deaf children use a variation of both signed and spoken languages, they share experiences similar to that of other bilingual children. Translanguaging in the Deaf community is thus unique because they use both visual and gestural, as well as spoken and written language modality. Translanguaging in bilingual deaf communities involves encouraging deaf children to use all their language skills. Teachers need to understand these methods to support their learning effectively.

Major Debates

A prominent argument against incorporating translanguaging into academic contexts is the notion that speakers of International Englishes would have difficulty communicating with one another because of the immense variety of Englishes spoken. However, advocates for translanguaging pedagogy maintain that misunderstandings between speakers of International Englishes who practice translanguaging are not common, and when misunderstandings do occur between speakers, they are quickly resolved through other means of negotiation. Advocates argue that speakers of International Englishes can communicate with relative ease because they have a variety of tools for making sense of the language varieties with which they engage.

Some academics call for the development of corpora of "nonstandard" English varieties to aid with the study of translanguaging.

Barbara Seidlhofer argues that language acquisition programs should not be teaching language with the intention of achieving native-speaker competence, but that they should be "embracing the emergent realistic goal of intercultural competence achieved through a plurilingualism that integrates rather than ostracizes" International Englishes. This pedagogical strategy necessitates translanguaging as a means through which to accomplish such plurilingualism. For Seidlhofer, the incorporation of such International Englishes into educational systems would be more beneficial for second language learners than current dominant language acquisition pedagogies, which emphasize standard American and British varieties of English. Since achieving native-speaker status is nearly impossible without years of study, translanguaging presents students with opportunities to learn language in a more supportive space, fostering their language acquisition in all varieties rather than enforcing the participation in and acquisition of a single dominant variety.

Proponents of decolonizing the English language argue that holding on to particular varieties of English as the only legitimate varieties to use in language acquisition programs is a practice that perpetuates destructive colonial attitudes towards non-English languages and the English varieties of their speakers. Incorporating translanguaging is one means through which such a decolonization of the English language could occur. In this way, decentralizing those particular dominant varieties of English would work towards legitimizing the use of "nonstandard" English varieties at the educational level.

Furthermore, Suresh Canagarajah argued that translanguaging allows students to use and negotiate meanings by using forms of language to communicate. Therefore, he believed that the concept empowers multilingual speakers and writers to be modest, open minded, and aware of the language hegemony. Another proponent of translanguaging is April Baker Bell who argued that the African American English is a distinctive language than the American English language. In addition, she argued that allowing African American students to code-meshing would enable them not to assimilate in the white mainstream culture and would enhance their understanding to the misrepresentation of their culture and language.Some compositionists view translanguaging is the communicative reality of global citizens and, as such, is essential to the investigative and pedagogical choices of composition scholars.

Other linguists have been against the use of L1 in the second language classroom since they argue that the first language would have a negative impact on the learning of L2: students will not be exposed as much to the target language and will have less opportunities to listen to and speak the L2. Therefore, they support the approach that excludes L1 and proposes that L2 should be the only language taught. [27]