Many of you will have heard
the word translanguaging in
relation to languages
teaching.
There's a great deal of
hype around translanguaging.
We want to make sure that
you get a sensible, practical
understanding of what
translanguaging can do
and how it might be used in
a languages classroom.
The one thing is that we know
that the conventional
view of languages
is that two languages
are generally taught as
two isolated systems.
The focus has tended
to be historically
on the structure of those
languages. So you've got the
vocabulary of what the actual
grammatical structure and so
on.
But most people who live in
bilingual and multilingual
parts of the world engage
in practices where they
bring words, they borrow
words from one language that
pop them into the language that
they're using.
English, by the way, is not
a pure language.
It is a dog's breakfast
of languages.
Okay.
It is just the biggest
advertising.
I don't think you have another
word in Australia, in South
Africa. We would say fuphy.
It is the biggest fuphy of
all time because
it's not actually one language,
it's just a collation of
languages.
Okay. We've borrowed from
Greek, Roman, every
single language community that
the English speakers have ever
come into contact with, they
just pinch their vocab pop
in and there is English.
So what
happens is English has
been translanguaging.
It has been borrowing words,
it has been absorbing words.
People have been using
alternating between
expressions in English or
French or German.
They pop in Latin sometimes
they pop them in all over the
place. In our South Australia,
we've borrowed a lot of
vocabulary from all of the
migrant communities who
have come here, and we have
borrowed a lot of vocabulary
from the indigenous communities
who were here before all of us.
So code mixing
is mixing of
languages.
Usually you have a dominant
structure and you just
incorporate a few words
or phrases into
a dominant language.
Code-switching can
be a
chunk of language you
speak or you write, or you
use a chunk of one language
and you switch over and you use
another chunk of a language.
The technical thing is that if
you use at least a clause
in a sentence in one language
and you switch over a new then
you develop a second
clause, a subordinate clause
in the second language you are
code-switching.
If you have one sentence in one
language and you alternate with
one sentence in a second
language, that is code-switching.
If you speak for ten minutes
in one language or you write
a paragraph in one language and
you switch over and you write
or speak in the other language,
that is code switching.
We normally do this for
particular purposes.
It's not arbitrary.
Everybody's got a reason for
why they do this.
We often do this when we want
to emphasize something.
We often do this for effect.
I used to do this with my
children. If I wanted them to
listen to me, they wouldn't
listen to me and behave and
obey me in English.
So I'd have to invoke
code because that's I.
Oh, okay.
We we use code-switching
very often for deliberate
purposes.
Now sometimes
in teaching languages,
the idea that children or
students might code
mix or code switch has
got a bad name and it's been
regarded as an
illegitimate practice.
So, during the period when
we felt that it was necessary
to separate two languages
completely and use the direct
method or the audio lingual
method, we said
to students in the classroom,
you are only going to
speak French,
you are only going to speak
Chinese.
But that has never happened in
practice. We have always
engaged in various code mixing
and code-switching practices
because as teachers we know
the students can't understand
only the target language.
We have to mediate.
So we use code-switching
actually quite purposefully,
quite often.
So what has happened is
that there is no contemporary
view that this is
a normal thing to do.
And because we move back
and forth between languages,
people have started saying
language is not a thing, it's
not a noun, it's actually a
verb, it's a process we're
involved in languaging.
The word translanguaging is
a translation of a Welsh term
for the practice of purposeful
or deliberate code switching
in a classroom in a bilingual
classroom between Welsh and
English, Welsh used
for explaining what's going on.
English is for reading and
writing perhaps, and vice
versa.
So that the term originally
came from purposeful
code switching.
Usually in order to make
students feel comfortable in
the classroom.
So when we are saying what's
important to work with the
children or the students home
languages, their English and
their additional languages,
we try to make things very
comfortable for the students
in the classroom.
We might use translanguaging
so that we
are promoting students
well-being.
We're trying to equalize
things. We're trying to make
language learning.
Not a big terrifying
ordeal, but it's something
where if you don't know
everything,
you'll
be able to use your
translanguage in practices
so we can use
translanguaging for convivial
horizontal purposes.
And that helps students
to feel comfortable in the
classroom, however,
it's also our job to
ensure that students learn
the target language as well
as possible.
So we also have to find ways
to separate the language and
usually the target
language. We're teaching
the target language, teaching
the vocabulary, teaching the
sentence structure.
We're teaching our students
to read and write text
in the target language.
So we use both horizontal
and vertical aspects of
translanguaging.
And what we're trying
to suggest here is that
it's really important to know
that you can use the horizontal
approaches to translanguaging
for part of the time,
but not all of the time.
Most likely because you
are time strapped,
you have to limit that amount
of time and most likely
you have to spend most of your
time on teaching the target
language and separating the
languages.
But you can use both
both aspects of
translanguaging, and the way
to focus on the vertical
approach is to use translation,
translating things like wise
sayings, translating
little stories and
reading and writing tasks that
the students can work
with.
So we've talked a bit about
translanguaging, this great
buzz word thinking
about this.
I broke down some some purposes
that translanguaging can serve
in your languages classroom.
And of course, translanguaging
can be English in the target
language.
It can be home languages and
English home languages and
target language and everything
together.
So these
multilingual practices can
support students to work
together.
It can be a teaching strategy
and it can be something that
teachers model to show.
This is what multilingual
people do.
It can support fluency in
writing and
earlier Kathleen was talking about
fluency, as you know, being
able to
write quickly or
just continue without being
stuck.
And trans languaging can be a
very useful little shortcut
to say I don't know that word,
I pop it down and come
back t o it later.
translanguaging, particularly
for students who
are multilingual,
is a support for the higher
order thinking, because they
have additional resources
which help them think about
things from a different
perspective or think with
a different level of ease
about concepts that you're
teaching in the class.
Translanguaging and this is I
find really exciting can
be content that students
can analyze to say, hey, what's
happening with language here,
what's happening with languages
together here?
And you'll see an example of
this.
And of course, translation
is a really specific set of
skills that
students can learn and
developed from early ages
and with different
proficiencies in languages.
So these are examples that we
will see.
Translanguaging for
multilingual students is a very
purposeful practice.
It's always purposeful.
It's never an accident.
And I'm sure,
in your own experience, you
would understand where I'm
coming from when I say that.
And translanguaging supports
relationships.
It supports learning.
It supports connection
to culture and keeping culture
and language alive,
particularly in
an environment that can
sometimes feel hostile
or a bit limiting.
When minority languages
come into play
and also really importantly,
trans languaging supports
personal identity.
So I can
give you some examples here
of what students in this school
were doing with language.
So we can see here,
students use language to
support their family and to
connect with the community and
to make connections between
family members and the
community through
translation.
Students use their languages
for collaborative learning
and to support each other, and
you can see in the second
example of Selena.
She was helping a new student
from India in science,
but they didn't actually
have a shared language
as such.
So Selena was Afghan.
She spoke Hazaragi.
She'd lived in Pakistan
and she knew Urdu.
The other student was
kudrati.
So she spoke kudrati,
but she also knew Hindi.
Now, as luck would have it.
Hindi and Urdu for these
students was mutually
comprehensible languages so
they could communicate with
each other.
The students also use
their languages for their
independent learning.
And you can see the example
of Shanaya who would?
You know, think about something
in English, think.
Now that's not working.
I'll switch to my other
language and see see what
happens, see if I can come up
with some more ideas.
So translanguaging,
I mean, none of this happened
by accident.
All of it took effort,
but all of it supported
learning and it was totally
worth it.
But the question is, what's the
teachers think?
Festivals?
Do they know what's going on?
Sometimes.
Do they know what to do with
it? Not very often.
And this is sometimes where we
get a bit maybe worried.
What do we do with this?
But as languages teachers, I
think, you know, we
have a good foundation and we
have an advantage
that, yeah, I get
this in a social context.
I can say this is not a taboo
kind of activity.
And the question then becomes,
you know, not should it happen
or not, but
how can I make this into a
resource in my classroom?
So we can see here that these
teachers from different
learning areas, we've got HASS,
Drama, Languages and
English represented here,
that they can see the value of
these languages and
translanguaging and that
these practices
support their students
identities, support
the subject learning, support
their thinking and support
them in language learning as
well, so
you can be a tool
for fluency or it can be
a content type of content
for analysis.
But we can see here that it's
also a learning process as well
and something that's
purposeful and
worth attending to I suppose,
and thinking about...
How can we make more of this in
our classrooms?