Speaker
Description
Starting as a translation of the Welsh trawsieithu coined by Cen William (1994, 1996), translanguaging has gained popularity recently as a pedagogy in language teaching. The concept is defined by García (2009) as diverse and dynamic discursive practices used by bilinguals in this increasingly multilingual world. It refers to languaging actions that challenge the power inequalities between national languages as produced by nation-state/colonial language ideologies (García & Wei, 2014). In the language classroom, it challenges the English-only policy and allows both the teacher and the learners to make full use of their semiotic repertoire for making meaning, connecting, thinking deeply and creating. This presentation looks at how translanguaging is used in lessons co-taught by an American volunteer teacher and a Vietnamese teacher of English. The American volunteer teachers in our project are assigned to co-teach with Vietnamese teachers at high schools in Viet Nam. Prior to their service at school, they learned the Vietnamese language in order to be able to live and work in the school community for two years. In this presentation we will discuss how they and schoolteachers immerse students in English but at the same time use Vietnamese to connect with students and facilitate their understanding and learning. We will conclude with recommendations on how translanguaging as practice and pedagogy can be used to create an equitable meaning-making space and prepare students to become global citizens.
