“Eight home languages. Twenty-seven students. Twenty-seven levels of English language development, home language literacy, and content knowledge. One room. One teacher. This is the reality of Andrew Brown’s 5th-grade class.” So begins the article co-authored by Mr. Brown and his researcher friend Heather Woodley after doing professional development with Ofelia García in New York. ThisContinue reading “How does translanguaging pedagogy work with 27 students, 8 home languages, and 1 monolingual teacher?”
Author Archives: annamend
Good news, bad news, and something to look forward to in 2021!
In the last semester of my PhD, I was auditing an advanced graduate seminar in psycholinguistics in which the professor began the three-hour meetings with the same exercise her children’s elementary school teachers used to do: “a rose, a thorn, or a bud.” The basic premise was to give students a choice to share oneContinue reading “Good news, bad news, and something to look forward to in 2021!”
What does translanguaging look like in English-as-a-Foreign Language contexts?
In 2012, Graham Hall and Guy Cook did a survey for the British Council on bi/multilingual language use in K-12 and adult English classrooms. Within three months, they had 2,785 teachers from 111 countries participate. Hall and Cook did not call the practice “translanguaging” but referred to teachers’ use of students’ “own language” — notContinue reading “What does translanguaging look like in English-as-a-Foreign Language contexts?”
How do we know translanguaging benefits language acquisition?
Though the socioemotional and critical pedagogy aspects of translanguaging have often been researched, what remains under-researched is the extent to which translanguaging benefits language development. This is not the kind of question that can simply be researched through pre-tests and post-tests. Using painstaking analysis of transcripts of student-centred interaction as her main data source, VinitiContinue reading “How do we know translanguaging benefits language acquisition?”
What is code-switching?
Is it an outdated theory of language? Does it suggest that individuals have separate compartments for separate languages in the brain? Is it the researcher’s perspective on language use, imposing language labels such as Spanish, English, etc., in contrast to how research participants experience languages as fluid and lacking clearly defined borders? Or is “codeswitching”Continue reading “What is code-switching?”
What is translanguaging?
I am not the first person to grapple with this question, which is a very big question that can have different legitimate answers. However, as someone whose PhD lit review attempted to distinguish a host of multilingual practices (including, but not limited to, translanguaging and code-switching), I have written the posts in this blog underContinue reading “What is translanguaging?”
What do teachers make of translanguaging the first time they learn about it?
Formerly an EFL teacher in Romania and a public middle school ESL teacher in the southern U.S., Dr. Elena Andrei, Assistant Professor of TESOL at a Midwestern U.S. university, attempted to introduce the construct “translanguaging” to a group of 20 undergraduate and graduate students preparing to teach ESL in K-12 schools. About a third ofContinue reading “What do teachers make of translanguaging the first time they learn about it?”
First post: 2020 in review
2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year that made history, and not just national history. A momentous year for anyone old enough to have a sense of things happening, and I’d say that would be anyone at least 4 or 5 years old. “Where were you during the COVID-19 pandemic? What were youContinue reading “First post: 2020 in review”
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