Professional Documents
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classroom
Pat Moore
For some time now, EFL has been debating the extent to which models of
attainment should be aligned with ‘native-speaker’ (NS) norms. One of the
core problems with the NS concept is that it implies a monolingual speaker, and
many of its critics have leant on descriptions coming out of bilingually oriented
research. Increasingly cited in recent critiques, the concept of ‘translanguaging’
was born in the classroom and has now moved out into society and, as a
starting point at least, may provide useful information for foreign-language
educators regarding bilingual learning and behaviour. In this article, I briefly
describe an EFL course inspired by translanguaging practices and discuss the
students’ reactions to the idea of bilinguality as the goal of EFL.
According to François Grosjean,3 Europeans tend to set the bar very high
when it comes to acknowledging bilingualism, and a straw poll conducted
Rationale and in the first week of term revealed that the majority of the BVI students
methodology were very reluctant to call themselves bi- and/or (much less) multi-lingual.
Classroom discussion revealed that many of them still subscribed to the
arguably out-dated understanding of bilingualism as ‘native-like control of
two languages’ (Bloomfield 1935: 56), which they associated with having
grown up ‘that way’. Since I have been conducting similar straw polls
with students for a couple of years now, this did not come as a surprise,
although, given the context and student profile, perhaps it should have
(after all, these are advanced foreign-language students working with
multiple languages towards a languages-related career).
The goal thus became to introduce them to a more contemporary take on
the issue and to encourage them to explore the terrain and, potentially,
assume the mantle, in other words, to start thinking of themselves
as bilinguals (and to gather data from them in the process). During
the course, we dealt with multilingualism as a topic, for example via a
reading aloud activity using short texts written by immigrants to the
UK.4 Students also experienced both proactive and reactive classroom
translanguaging. As examples of the former, we undertook a collaborative
writing activity which involved students retelling (in English) the opening
story from the Argentinian film Relatos Selvajes. We also explored the
transfer/interference issue (by translating chunks of text containing false
cognates) and looked at how to exploit the similarities between English
and Spanish. As an example of the latter, while they were in groups
and on-task, designing a leaflet for a special-interest weekend break in
Andalucía (English output), I did not insist on their talking in English (see
discussion below).
In the BVI course, written interaction was partially assessed by means of
an exchange of letters. During the course, students received (en masse),
and had to reply to (individually), three letters from me. Each of the letters
contained a series of prompts, and how students responded to these
prompts helped to inform the evaluation of their interactive writing. They
also allowed me to explain my pedagogic approach and to gauge student
reactions/attitudes/opinions.
The letters were written in a colloquial style and students were instructed
to follow suit. This was partly motivated by a desire to increase their
stylistic range but also for affective reasons. In Figure 1 below (from my
second letter and following on directly from discussion of the group work
leaflet design task described above), I explicitly addressed the topic of
multilingualism in ELT.
Students were advised not to try to answer everything in the prompt letters
but rather to focus on things they were personally interested in. In the
Results and 114 replies received, 78 students responded in some way to the question
discussion of multilingualism; ‘in some way’ because it became clear that there
were both explicit and implicit responses to the issue. Fifty-six students
responded explicitly to the above extract with further discussion of the
topic and these are the texts which shape the discussion below. In many
of their replies, however, students were also putting the ideas into practice
and thereby responding implicitly. Thirty-three of the students who
responded explicitly also translanguaged in their texts, as in the example
below, and a further 22 translanguaged but did not pick up explicitly on
the topic. In the extracts, numbers in square brackets identify the student.
(Students have all given written permission for the use of their texts for
research purposes.)
Can you SERIOUSLY imagine how would it be if I only had Twitter?
I can tell you: Fin de la vida, as my classmates and I like to call it. [2]
Notice that this student does not provide a translation for the Spanish
employed; within the class more generally, some do and some do not (see
below for further discussion). Similarly, some flag ‘foreign’ words with
italics or scare marks and some do not. In the extracts here, rather than
artificially standardizing the students’ writing, I am reproducing their
writing in its original form.
From the perspective of explicit response, three strands emerge:
1 reactions to the ideas in theory;
2 reactions to in-class practice; and
3 reflections on out-of-classroom practice.
[I]t doesn’t matter which language you’re supposed to use, the main
goal here is to communicate, to understand and to be understood. And
it feels soooooo good when you realize you’re capable. [58]
The objective of this small, exploratory piece of research was to see how
students would react to the overt subversion of monolingual (i.e. English-
only) norms in an EFL classroom. As teacher/researcher, I adopted
Classroom Translanguaging techniques and, although classes were still
Conclusions
conducted largely in and generally focused on English, English was not
the sole goal of the lessons. The students were encouraged to reconsider
bilinguality and were given the opportunity to reflect upon the idea
through interactive writing.
In this case, the results were generally positive: over two-thirds of the
students reacted favourably (explicitly and/or implicitly) to the notion. It
is quite possible, however, that both the advanced levels of these students
and the fact that they are studying multiple languages made them more
receptive to the idea of translanguaging and bilinguality. The approach
therefore needs to be repeated with lower-level, and younger, students
who might only be studying one foreign language, and also with a range
of teachers.
We should also not ignore the fact that the way the writing was evaluated
could have skewed the results to some degree. After all, the students were
aware of my pro-bilingual stance and there may well have been some
hacerme la pelota (saying what they thought I wanted to hear/‘sucking up’
to me). But it does have to be said that when discussing other potentially
controversial topics in class, they had no compunction in expressing
disagreement with what they perceived to be my views. Of course, during
the exchange of letters, 36 students neither discussed the topic nor
translanguaged in their texts and we can only speculate as to their beliefs,
or eliminate the self-selection aspect of the next study.
Final version received June 2017
2 The idea of super-diversity has evolved in the Hamers, J. F. and M. Blanc. 1989/2000. Bilinguality and
social sciences to reflect the complexity of modern Bilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
multi-culturality in large urban cities. For more Holliday, A. 2006. ‘Native-speakerism’. ELT Journal
information, visit: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_ 60/4: 385–7.
news/4266102.stm (accessed on 25 August 2017). Lewis, G., R. Jones, and C. Baker.2012.
3 For more information, visit http://www. ‘Translanguaging origins and development: from
multilingualliving.com/2011/03/03/what- school to street and beyond’. Educational Research and
bilingualism-is-not/ (accessed on 25 August 2017). Evaluation 18/7: 641–54.
4 For more information, visit https:// May, S. (ed.). 2013. The Multilingual Turn. New York,
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ NY: Routledge.
ng-interactive/2015/mar/24/immigrants-in-their- Nikula, T. and P. Moore. 2016. ‘Exploring
own-words-100-stories (accessed on 25 August 2017). translanguaging in CLIL’. International Journal of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Advanced Access
published 17 May 2016.
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(eds.). Handbook of English Language Teaching. Berlin:
Springer. The author
Cook, V. 2016. ‘Where is the native speaker now?’ Pat Moore has been involved in ELT since the
TESOL Quarterly 50/1: 186–9. beginning of the 1980s. She has worked in both the
Council of Europe. 2017. CEFR Companion Volume state and private sectors in the UK, Greece, France,
with New Descriptors. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Portugal, Brazil, and China. Since 2004, she has
Available at https://rm.coe.int/common-european- been working in the Department of Languages and
framework-of-reference-for-languages-learning- Translation at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in
teaching/168074a4e2 (accessed on 25 August 2017). Seville. Her interest in bilinguality stems from ten
García, O. 2012. ‘Theorizing translanguaging years researching secondary bilingual education
for educators’ in C. Celic and K. Seltzer (eds.). (CLIL), and she is now looking at ways to apply
Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB Guide for what she has learnt to other EFL contexts.
Educators. New York, NY: CUNY-NYSIEB. Email: pfmoox@upo.es