Translanguaging: Teacher's Role in the Classroom

Software I use to make my videos: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinm...

Books I used to research:
The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning: https://amzn.to/3bAXgVG
Tongue Tied: https://amzn.to/3qBdiDx

The translanguaging classroom is built on action--linguistic action--or what is called “languaging.” This demands a shift in our teaching style, where--in the words of *Stephen Krashen--natural communication is emphasized, and “speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.” The belief is--when it comes to languaging--if we can get our students to engage in ideas and stories--and let them use their full linguistic repertoires (or all the the languages they know)--conceptual knowledge and language will blossom. If students can create comprehensible output--unconcerned about grammatical mistakes and free to use their first language--that is sufficient for that moment. The goal is getting students into the game--into the beautiful linguistic struggle that is needed to learn language. And by letting students use other languages in their academic work, we are allowing students to synthesize all the cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge they possess. This process is the birth of students creating their own knowledge, that liberating and empowering feeling when you take the things you have experienced, the cultures you know, the books you have read, the people you have met--and you create your own thinking.

The teacher has two main roles in facilitating a translanguaging classroom

1. Teachers must model linguistic curiosity and metalinguistic awareness to their students

The best way for teachers to model linguistic curiosity is becoming what Ofelia Garcia calls “co-learners” in the classroom. This means allowing--at times--students to teach you, the teacher. Students need to know that they are linguistic experts--and the best way to do this is to ask students questions and have them teach you the language and culture they know. When students teach me a Spanish word I like to ask how that word compares to its English equivalent. We compare dictionary definitions of the words and I ask them if the words are truly the same. This question often generates an “aha” moment for students--the realization that words and their meanings are cultivated in specific cultural contexts--and that there is incredible nuance to each word. Students need to know that they

hold deep cultural and linguistic wealth--and that some of this wealth is unique to them. The best way to do this is not to preach to them the importance of their culture, but to let them discover their funds of knowledge via the questions you ask them.

It is also important to model metalinguistic awareness to students. In the same way that think alouds are useful for teaching writing, thus allowing students to hear the way you, the teacher, dissect sentences and analyze language, think alouds are also essential for students to think metalinguistically. When students explain Spanish word meanings to me, I model the creation of my own learning by comparing what they teach me to my first language--English, and the other languages I have studied, Georgian and Korean. I talk about things such as the number of “self” words in English: self-esteem, self-disciple, self-respect, etc--and how individualism is a cultural value in the United States--thus a reason why there are so many words with the prefix-self. I then ask students to try to find similar concepts in their first language. This allows students to see that there’s an infinite amount of dots they can connect--and that there are cultural and linguistic dots all around them.

2. The second thing teachers must do is include translanguaging texts in their curriculum

A great start is the book “Tongue Tied.” I like this book because it demonstrates that Spanglish can be written about academically, and by academic people. Students are often surprised by this--that the Spanglish they speak in their daily lives--that the translanguaging they use to communicate ideas to family members is an academic task. Academic thinking is not solely done in the classroom, but is something bilinguals do daily--with their language. It is this realization that unveils bilingual identities that students become proud of and want to further explore and build upon.

A great text for teaching native Spanish speakers is Speaking Spanglish by Abby Figueroa. Not only does Figueroa use translanguaging in her writing, but she explains her own struggles as a bicultural and bilingual person.

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