If studentsare too comfortable using their preferred languagein class, will the desire to become English-fluentdecline?
This is a valid counterpoint to pro-translanguage attitude. It also provides an open question to the reader regarding their own beliefs on the subject.
there are not enough bilingualteachers (yet) to offer dual language instruc-tion
This is the primary conflict presented for translanguage use. A "happy medium" needs to be worked out for the good of teachers and learners.
Teachers are inviting students to usetheir home languages to talk to their classmates,to do drafts of their writing, to journal to theirparents, and, if the teacher is fluent and everyoneelse in the class is bilingual, to explain things inanother language in the classroom.
Progress is being made for more inclusivity in academic settings for translanguage as a valid concept. This is real-world evidence of it.
Why should theybe consigned to foreign language classes thatleave them with little to show when they couldbe bilingual and biliterate before high school,like most of the rest of the world?
This is a point that I have often wondered about myself. It is also one of the big reasons I decided to take a Spanish class. Many countries outside of the US teach young students a second language. Why doesn't the US?
Spanish in Illinois isthriving!
This is rather surprising information to me, but good to learn.
Translanguaging goes beyond these antecedents,however, to add something new and importantto American education. Li Wei and Ofelia García(2022) call translanguaging a “decolonializingproject” (p. 313), and many other researchers andpractitioners raise the issues of language justiceand social hierarchy
This showcases a sort of resistance/rebellion against the strict enforcement and oppression of Standard English across the board. Standard English is not always the epitome of highlighting intelligence in academic settings.
The concept that all of these words are partof your identity is completely consistent withlinguist Noam Chomsky’s (1968) core conceptof Universal Grammar in which language-mak-ing is universal and hard-wired in all humans.
Translanguaging is not just a societal concept, but something cognitive and "natural" for multilingual learners.
Translanguaging callsfor “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguis-tic repertoire” (Oteguy et al., 2015, p. 281; seealso Chalmers, 2016; García & Wei, 2014). Inother words, you have the right—and delight—to employ all of the words and gestures you’vegot.
Translanguaging, as a concept, allows for a learner's full use all languages that are part of their identity. Thus allowing them to use their full intellect. They're not "looked down on" if they don't have a perfect understanding/use of Standard English.
African-American teachers I teach oftenexpress that they need to code switch in white-dominant settings and describe it as confusingand stressful, although it is a skill they say theymust acquire and exercise.
A Standard English speaker/user doesn't have to worry about being taken seriously or looked at as "equal" whereas someone who isn't familiar with Standard English must conform. They have no choice.
The difference might be that code switching isconsidered a more “local” act whereas translan-guaging is considered the cognitive underpin-ning of many speech acts (Wei, 2018).
So translanguaging goes "deeper" than code switching. Someone's brain can alternate between two or more languages to put together a complete sentence even when its not completely in English.
thedeficit is not in the person but in the language!
This is an important distinction that I feel can be easily forgotten in academic settings.
Looking for“the right word” or phrase may bring to minda word from another language familiar to theothers in the room.
This is a good way to describe code switching. I've witnessed people, when English is not their first language, doing/saying this. "There's no equivalent of this word in English compared to my native language." So descriptors are used instead.
diglossia reached its peak in 1993, according toGoogle Ngram, and has declined rapidly sincethen, probably in inverse relation to the rise ofthe term translanguage.
Some history of the use of diglossia.
(1) diglossia and (2) code switching.
Descriptions for translanguaging prior to the use of the word.
the poor wishful learner is always aspiring, butnever quite able, to reach the level of any nativespeaker
This concept resonates. Someone learning a language with little to no prior familiarity will never be able to speak it as well or naturally as someone who was born into/grew up with it. So insisting that the learner reach for that level of understanding seemed almost unethical.
we putlearners under huge headphones in a languagelab to endlessly mimic a (very unnatural sound-ing) man’s stilted sentences.
This example of learning a new language, from a student point-of-view, feels shallow and unhelpful. As I am learning Spanish as a second language, being in this position would not do me any favors. I need to see the words, use them myself, and have them explained to me rather than repeated soullessly.
there was almost a fetishistic focuson perfection and correctness
The focus of this academy wasn't in the right place. Understanding the meaning of words should be more important compared to perfect/utterly correct usage.
peda-gogy
The teaching of a subject in an educational setting.
“If youwant to really hurt me, talk badly about my lan-guage. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguisticidentity—I am my language”
This quote succinctly encapsulates how language affects a person(s). Language = identity.
If my language is banned, mocked, and lookeddown upon, what does that say about my valueas a person?
Suppression of a native language then becomes a self-esteem/self-image problem that can evolve rapidly.
Even now, in the post-colonial system rightto the present day, many students are requiredto “leave their home language at the classroomdoor.” What could be more soul-destroying thannot having the opportunity to become literate inone’s own home language?
This demonstrates the ethical and emotional impact of language critiquing/policing in academic settings.
Many post-colonial free nations have removedthe European languages in favor of their ownnational languages, although the colonial lan-guages can be handy as lingua francas across dif-ferent regions and countries and in nongovern-mental organizations.
This showcases a language hierarchy and favoritism over time. As well as how imposed language can alter the native language in beneficial ways. Thus translanguaging.
The Welsh havekeenly felt the suppression of their language bytheir English colonizers for centuries
An example of colonization suppressing a native language thus deeming it to be not the standard form of language.
The term was first coined by Welsh educator CenWilliams in 1994, in an article he wrote in Welshand then translated to English about ways to useboth languages in the classroom.
Origin of translanguaging and how/where it can be used.
Wei and García(2022) note that there were 23,000 mentionsof translanguaging in a March 2022 GoogleScholar search (p. 314).
The timeline of the term translanguaging thus far (continued).
The Google NgramViewer (2024b), which searches a vast naturallanguage database to track how often a word orphrase is used over time, shows that as recentlyas 1980, the words translanguage and translan-guaging appeared 0% of the time, even with 10decimals after them! However, by 2019, trans-languaging had exploded to .241354, with onlyfive zeroes in front of it!
The timeline of the term translanguaging thus far.
to this influ-ential concept (“old wine”), predicts how thismovement may affect your education setting(“new bottle”)
I like the metaphor for this concept. Bringing previously knowledge into a new area of life.
antecedents
Something that precedes something else.
translanguaging
The use of multiple languages at once.
The main idea of this work.
If studentsare too comfortable using their preferred languagein class, will the desire to become English-fluentdecline?
This is a valid counterpoint to pro-translanguage attitude. It also provides an open question to the reader regarding their own beliefs on the subject.
there are not enough bilingualteachers (yet) to offer dual language instruc-tion
This is the primary conflict presented for translanguage use. A "happy medium" needs to be worked out for the good of teachers and learners.
Teachers are inviting students to usetheir home languages to talk to their classmates,to do drafts of their writing, to journal to theirparents, and, if the teacher is fluent and everyoneelse in the class is bilingual, to explain things inanother language in the classroom.
Progress is being made for more inclusivity in academic settings for translanguage as a valid concept. This is real-world evidence of it.
Why should theybe consigned to foreign language classes thatleave them with little to show when they couldbe bilingual and biliterate before high school,like most of the rest of the world?
This is a point that I have often wondered about myself. It is also one of the big reasons I decided to take a Spanish class. Many countries outside of the US teach young students a second language. Why doesn't the US?
Spanish in Illinois isthriving!
This is rather surprising information to me, but good to learn.
Translanguaging goes beyond these antecedents,however, to add something new and importantto American education. Li Wei and Ofelia García(2022) call translanguaging a “decolonializingproject” (p. 313), and many other researchers andpractitioners raise the issues of language justiceand social hierarchy
This showcases a sort of resistance/rebellion against the strict enforcement and oppression of Standard English across the board. Standard English is not always the epitome of highlighting intelligence in academic settings.
The concept that all of these words are partof your identity is completely consistent withlinguist Noam Chomsky’s (1968) core conceptof Universal Grammar in which language-mak-ing is universal and hard-wired in all humans.
Translanguaging is not just a societal concept, but something cognitive and "natural" for multilingual learners.
Translanguaging callsfor “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguis-tic repertoire” (Oteguy et al., 2015, p. 281; seealso Chalmers, 2016; García & Wei, 2014). Inother words, you have the right—and delight—to employ all of the words and gestures you’vegot.
Translanguaging, as a concept, allows for a learner's full use all languages that are part of their identity. Thus allowing them to use their full intellect. They're not "looked down on" if they don't have a perfect understanding/use of Standard English.
African-American teachers I teach oftenexpress that they need to code switch in white-dominant settings and describe it as confusingand stressful, although it is a skill they say theymust acquire and exercise.
A Standard English speaker/user doesn't have to worry about being taken seriously or looked at as "equal" whereas someone who isn't familiar with Standard English must conform. They have no choice.
The difference might be that code switching isconsidered a more “local” act whereas translan-guaging is considered the cognitive underpin-ning of many speech acts (Wei, 2018).
So translanguaging goes "deeper" than code switching. Someone's brain can alternate between two or more languages to put together a complete sentence even when its not completely in English.
thedeficit is not in the person but in the language!
This is an important distinction that I feel can be easily forgotten in academic settings.
Looking for“the right word” or phrase may bring to minda word from another language familiar to theothers in the room.
This is a good way to describe code switching. I've witnessed people, when English is not their first language, doing/saying this. "There's no equivalent of this word in English compared to my native language." So descriptors are used instead.
diglossia reached its peak in 1993, according toGoogle Ngram, and has declined rapidly sincethen, probably in inverse relation to the rise ofthe term translanguage.
Some history of the use of diglossia.
(1) diglossia and (2) code switching.
Descriptions for translanguaging prior to the use of the word.
the poor wishful learner is always aspiring, butnever quite able, to reach the level of any nativespeaker
This concept resonates. Someone learning a language with little to no prior familiarity will never be able to speak it as well or naturally as someone who was born into/grew up with it. So insisting that the learner reach for that level of understanding seemed almost unethical.
we putlearners under huge headphones in a languagelab to endlessly mimic a (very unnatural sound-ing) man’s stilted sentences
This example of learning a new language, from a student point-of-view, feels shallow and unhelpful. As I am learning Spanish as a second language, being in this position would not do me any favors. I need to see the words, use them myself, and have them explained to me rather than repeated soullessly.
there was almost a fetishistic focuson perfection and correctness
The focus of this academy wasn't in the right place. Understanding the meaning of words should be more important compared to perfect/utterly correct usage.
peda-gogy
The teaching of a subject in an educational setting.
“If youwant to really hurt me, talk badly about my lan-guage. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguisticidentity—I am my language”
This quote succinctly encapsulates how language affects a person(s). Language = identity.
If my language is banned, mocked, and lookeddown upon, what does that say about my valueas a person?
Suppression of a native language then becomes a self-esteem/self-image problem that can evolve rapidly.
Even now, in the post-colonial system rightto the present day, many students are requiredto “leave their home language at the classroomdoor.” What could be more soul-destroying thannot having the opportunity to become literate inone’s own home language?
This demonstrates the ethical and emotional impact of language critiquing/policing in academic settings.
Many post-colonial free nations have removedthe European languages in favor of their ownnational languages, although the colonial lan-guages can be handy as lingua francas across dif-ferent regions and countries and in nongovern-mental organizations.
Showcases a language hierarchy and favoritism over time. As well as how imposed language can alter the native language in beneficial ways. Thus translanguaging.
The Welsh havekeenly felt the suppression of their language bytheir English colonizers for centuries,
An example of colonization suppressing a native language thus deeming it to be not the standard form of language.
The term was first coined by Welsh educator CenWilliams in 1994, in an article he wrote in Welshand then translated to English about ways to useboth languages in the classroom.
Origin of translanguaging and how/where it can be used.
Wei and García(2022) note that there were 23,000 mentionsof translanguaging in a March 2022 GoogleScholar search (p. 314).
The timelines of the term translanguaging thus far (continued).
The Google NgramViewer (2024b), which searches a vast naturallanguage database to track how often a word orphrase is used over time, shows that as recentlyas 1980, the words translanguage and translan-guaging appeared 0% of the time, even with 10decimals after them! However, by 2019, trans-languaging had exploded to .241354, with onlyfive zeroes in front of it!
The timeline of the term translanguaging thus far.
translanguaging
The use of multiple languages at once.
The main idea of this work.
to this influ-ential concept (“old wine”), predicts how thismovement may affect your education setting(“new bottle”)
I like the metaphor for this concept. Bringing previously knowledge into a new area of life.
antecedents
Something that precedes something else.