TRANSLANGUAGING

Translanguaging in Bilingual Education Ofelia García and Angel M.Y. Lin

Since Cen Williams first used the Welsh term trawsieithu in 1994 to refer to a pedagogical
practice where students in bilingual Welsh/English classrooms are asked to alternate languages
for the purposes of receptive or productive use, the term translanguaging has been
increasingly used in the scholarly literature to refer to both the complex and fluid language
practices of bilinguals, as well as the pedagogical approaches that leverage those practices.

Although different epistemologically, translanguaging is linked to the study of code switching in

education in that it also disrupts the traditional isolation of languages in language teaching and
learning. Despite the documentation of code switching as a prevalent pragmatic practice, code
switching is “rarely institutionally endorsed or pedagogically underpinned” (Creese and
Blackledge 2010, p. 105).

the concept of translanguaging makes a very different contribution and it is, as we will discuss,
an epistemologically different concept because it questions the proposition that what
bilinguals are doing is going from one language to another

In its Welsh origins, translanguaging, or trawsieithu as it was originally coined in Welsh

(Williams 1994), referred to a pedagogical practice in bilingual education that deliberately
changed the language of input and the language of output.

Welsh scholars understood that bilingualism was precisely an important instrument in the
learning and development of their integrated bilingualism, as well as in the cognitive
involvement that was required to be educated bilingually. Lewis et al. (2012b) clarify that
translanguaging refers to using one language to reinforce the other in order to increase
understanding and augment the pupil’s activity in both languages.

Colin Baker, one of the most influential scholars in the field of bilingual education, observed
how the practice of what he first translated from the Welsh trawsieithu as translanguaging
helped students make meaning and gain understandings and knowledge. He explained: “To
read and discuss a topic in one language, and then to write about it in another language,
means that the subject matter has to be processed and “digested”” (2011, p. 289).

Baker (2001) pointed out four potential educational advantages to translanguaging: 1. It may
promote a deeper and fuller understanding of the subject matter. 2. It may help the
development of the weaker language. 3. It may facilitate home-school links and cooperation. 4.
It may help the integration of fluent speakers with early learners.
The same Welsh researchers have concluded that in translanguaging, “both languages are used
in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organise and mediate mental processes in
understanding, speaking, literacy, and, not least, learning”

Translanguaging should also be seen differently from code switching. Code switching, even to
those scholars who see it as linguistic mastery (see, for example, Auer 2005; Gumperz 1982;
Myers-Scotton 2005), is based on the monoglossic view that bilinguals have two separate
linguistic systems. Translanguaging, however, posits the linguistic behavior of bilinguals as
being always heteroglossic (see Bakhtin 1981; Bailey 2007), always dynamic, responding not to
two monolingualisms in one but to one integrated linguistic system

But as a result of the ethnic revival and the demands of minority groups for their civil rights in
the second half of the twentieth century, bilingual education became a way of developing the
bilingualism of language-minoritized people, especially of those groups that had experienced
language shift and language loss as a result of monolingual schooling.

. One was Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective (2009) by Ofelia García.
The other two were by Blackledge and Creese – one an article in The Modern Language Journal
(Creese and Blackledge 2010) and the other a book titled Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective
(Blackledge and Creese 2010).

Translanguaging, García (2009) continues, are “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals
engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds”.

In education, García says, translanguaging goes beyond code switching and translation because
it refers to the process by which bilingual students perform bilingually in the myriad
multimodal ways of classrooms.

Both languages are needed simultaneously to convey the information, ... each language is used
to convey a different informational message, but it is in the bilingualism of the text that the full
message is conveyed. (p. 108) And in analyzing the pair work students do, they comment: “It is
the combination of both languages that keeps the task moving forward” (p. 110).

n 2011 Canagarajah takes up the term translanguaging as “the ability of multilingual speakers
to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an
integrated system”

Otheguy, García and Reid (2015) explicitly differentiate translanguaging from code switching,
defining translanguaging as “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without
regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and
usually national and state) languages” (p. 3)

Flores tells, is “a political act.” Although many are using the term, not all scholars see it in this
vein.

Translanguaging Sara Vogel and Ofelia Garcia Subject: Languages and LiteraciesOnline
Publication Date: Dec 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.181
Translanguaging as a sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic theory has much to offer to our
understandings of the languaging of bilinguals because it privileges bilingual performances and
not just monolingual ones.

Lambert (1974) characterized language education for bilingual populations as following a

“subtractive” or “additive”

García (2009) to propose that bilingualism might be better perceived as dynamic.

. In Wales, Cen Williams first coined the term translanguaging (in Welsh) to refer to pedagogical
practices in which English and Welsh were used for different activities and purposes (i.e.,
reading in one language, writing in another).

García (2009) used the term translanguaging to also refer to how bilingual people fluidly use
their linguistic resources —without regard to named language categories—to make meaning
and communicate.

In his theory of Linguistic Interdependence, Cummins posited that linguistic or metalinguistic

practices learned in one language could be transferred to another (Cummins, 1979).

While this theory does destabilize the idea that languages are stored completely separately in
the brain, it relies on the assumption that a bilingual person has a dual linguistic system and
that he or she transfers competencies between those systems (García & Kleyn, 2016).

A translanguaging pedagogy is capable of developing both of the named languages that are the
object of bilingual instruction precisely because it considers them in a horizontal continua as
part of the learners’ linguistic repertoire, rather than as separate compartments in a
hierarchical relationship.

1. Supporting students as they engage with and comprehend complex content and texts.

2. Providing opportunities for students to develop linguistic practices for academic contexts,

3. Making space for students’ bilingualism and ways of knowing,

4. Supporting students’ bilingual identities and socioemotional development.

OFELIA GARCIA AND LI WEI 2015

García, O., & Lin, A. M. Y.

(2016). Translanguaging in
bilingual education. In O.
García, A. M. Y. Lin, & S.
May (Eds.), Bilingual and
Multilingual Education
(Encyclopedia of Language
and Education) (pp. 117-
130). Switzerland: Springe
García, O., & Lin, A. M. Y.
(2016). Translanguaging in
bilingual education. In O.
García, A. M. Y. Lin, & S.
May (Eds.), Bilingual and
Multilingual Education
(Encyclopedia of Language
and Education) (pp. 117-
130). Switzerland: Springe
García, O., & Lin, A. M. Y. (2016). Translanguaging in bilingual education. In O. García, A. M. Y.
Lin, & S. May (Eds.), Bilingual and Multilingual Education (Encyclopedia of Language and
Education) (pp. 117-130). Switzerland: Springer.
The term translanguaging was coined in Welsh By Williams to refers to a practice of
deliberately chaging the language of inout and the language of output.

Garcia (2009a) translanguagis are multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in
order to make sense of their bilingual worlds. ,,

“have paid no real attention to what happens concurrently to the first language as
it restructures itself in contact with L2”

Before proceeding, however, it is important that I state what I mean by the terms
bilingualism and bilingual. Bilingualism is the regular use of two (or more) languages,
and bilinguals are those people who need and use two (or more) languages in their
everyday lives. (p.20, 1985)
These tests rarely take into account the bilingual’s differential needs for the two
languages or the different social functions of these languages (what a language is used
for, with whom and where). (p. 21 1985) in fact,half of the world’s population is
bilingual)
DEFINIRI FLUÊNCIA/PROFICIÊNCIA
Learning or restructuring a language (or variety) takes time, and yet the
child is often tagged as “semilingual” or “alingual” before he or she has had the
time to adjust to the new language environment. Time is a critical factor, as are
need and motivation:
TESE!!!! It will encourage us to study the bilingual as a whole. We will no
longer
examine one of the bilingual’s languages without examining the other(s);
rather we will study how the bilingual structures and uses the two or more
languages, separately or together, to meet his or her everyday communicative needs.
Fluencia

Proficiencia

If translanguaging refers to the use of a dynamic linguistic repertoire, rather

than Simply the use of named languages of nation-states, then all students carry
translanguaging with them into classrooms. GARCIA LI WEI 2018
 Translanguaging pedagogy has been proposed as a way of acknowledging
the students’ flexible and dynamic language practices, whether they appear at the
surface and are visible or not, and as a means to leverage the meaning-making
communicative system of all students from the beginning of schooling. The goal is to
ensure that students are engaged in learning at all times and that they add new linguistic
and semiotic features as they expand their meaning-making repertoire.
Translanguaging has grown out of pedagogical strategies that enabled and
empowered bilingual learners and teachers to engage in knowledge construction through
flexible use of their linguistic repertoire irrespective of what named languages they
know.
CODE=SWITHING (BULLOCK, TORIBIO, 2009) É A HABILIDADE
QUE PARTE DOS BILINGUES TEM DE ALRERNAR SEM ESFORÇO AS DUAS
LINGUAS.
A criança bilingue desenvolve precocemente a capacidade de distinguir as
suas línguas e o facto de utilizar as duas num mesmo enunciado não é evidência de
confusão dos dois idiomas. (ALMEIDA E FLORES 2017)
If translanguaging refers to the use of a dynamic linguistic repertoire, rather
than Simply the use of named languages of nation-states, then all students carry
translanguaging with them into classrooms. GARCIA LI WEI 2018

Translanguaging pedagogy has been proposed as a way of acknowledging

the students’ flexible and dynamic language practices, whether they appear at the
surface and are visible or not, and as a means to leverage the meaning-making
communicative system of all students from the beginning of schooling. The goal is to
ensure that students are engaged in learning at all times and that they add new linguistic
and semiotic features as they expand their meaning-making repertoire.
Translanguaging has grown out of pedagogical strategies that enabled and
empowered bilingual learners and teachers to engage in knowledge construction through
flexible use of their linguistic repertoire irrespective of what named languages they
know.
CODE=SWITHING (BULLOCK, TORIBIO, 2009) É A HABILIDADE
QUE PARTE DOS BILINGUES TEM DE ALRERNAR SEM ESFORÇO AS DUAS
LINGUAS.
 A criança bilingue desenvolve precocemente a capacidade de distinguir as
suas línguas e o facto de utilizar as duas num mesmo enunciado não é evidência de
confusão dos dois idiomas. (ALMEIDA E FLORES 2017) , o facto de as crianças
utilizarem num mesmo enunciado elementos pertencentes às duas línguas é interpretado
como decorrente da não diferenciação por parte das crianças dos seus dois sistemas
linguísticos.
Grosjean (2004) afirma que uma propriedade da utilização que os bilingues
fazem das suas línguas está relacionada com o conceito de “modo de língua”. Embora
seja aceite que as duas línguas dos bilingues estão ativadas constantemente, o seu grau
de ativação varia: por exemplo, perante uma pessoa monolingue, haverá uma menor
ativação de uma língua. Por oposição, em situação de fala com outra pessoa bilingue, o
bilingue encontra-se num “modo bilingue”, em que as duas línguas estão praticamente
ativadas de igual forma.

Translanguaging, García (2009) continues, are “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals
engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds” (p. 45, emphasis in original). In
education, García says, translanguaging goes beyond code-switching and translation because it
refers to the process by which bilingual students perform bilingually in the myriad multimodal
ways of classrooms

A translinguagem, continua García (2009), são “práticas discursivas múltiplas nas quais os
bilíngues se envolvem para dar sentido a seus mundos bilíngues” (p. 45, grifo no original). Na
educação, diz García, a translinguagem vai além da troca de códigos e da tradução porque se
refere ao processo pelo qual os alunos bilíngues atuam bilíngües nas inúmeras formas
multimodais das salas de aula

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar a noção de translinguagem no contexto

de educação bilíngue e suas implicações, sobretudo, na construção de conceitos nos dois
idiomas. Para tanto, serão observados os processos ostensivo-inferenciais, com base da
teoria da relevância (Sperber,  Wilson, 1986/1995), mobilizados por estudantes dos 5ºs
e 9ºs anos da Dual Internacional School, escola bilíngue por imersão (português-inglês),
localizada na capital catarinense, Florianópolis.

Por translinguagem, entendem-se as “práticas discursivas múltiplas nas quais os

bilíngues se envolvem para dar sentido a seus mundos bilíngues”. Na educação, a
translinguagem vai além da troca de códigos e tradução, visto que se refere ao processo
pelo qual estudantes bilíngues performam o bilinguismo nas inúmeras formas
multimodais vivenciadas em salas de aula. A teoria da relevância, por sua vez, é uma
abordagem pragmático-cognitiva com a qual se analisa como fatores linguísticos e
contextuais relacionam-se no processo interpretativo de estímulos, especialmente
aqueles de ordem comunicacional ou ostensiva (SPERBER, WILSON, 1986/1995).

No que diz respeito à metodologia da pesquisa, pretende-se coletar os dados nas

turmas de 5º e 9º anos, respectivamente, últimos anos do Ensino Fundamental I e
Ensino Fundamental II, a fim de observar como a translinguagem decorre de acordo o
avanço da faixa-etária.

Considerando que há duas turmas para cada ano (G5 A, G5 B, G9 A, G9 B), a

proposta é de que um determinado assunto seja apresentado e discutido, por exemplo,
com a turma A em português e com a turma B em inglês. Na sequência, os estudantes
seriam divididos em grupos com objetivo de realizar uma produção sobre o tema
discutido, só que no idioma contrário. Em outras palavras, quem tivesse a discussão
realizada em português produziria em inglês, ao passo que quem tivesse a discussão
realizada em inglês, produziria em português.

Nesse cenário, os dados coletados para a análise seriam gravações de áudio da

conversa de cada grupo na realização da atividade proposta, visto que o que é de
interesse dessa pesquisa é o processo da produção, não o resultado final. Isto é, as
produções serão um pretexto para a análise da translinguagem acontecendo através da
criação de hipóteses, elaboração de sentidos e argumentações dos estudantes nas duas
línguas.

Antes da aplicação da pesquisa, a proposta passará pelo comitê de ética e,

consequentemente, somente participarão os alunos com o devido consentimento dos
responsáveis. No mais, a ideia ainda está em desenvolvimento e aberta a sugestões da
equipe gestora, coordenação e corpo docente.