Reconceptualizing Additional Language Development Through Ecological Perspectives and Affordances

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Language Policies and Educational Equity for Bilingual Education in the United States

Abstract

Research on translanguaging has effectively challenged monolingual perspectives and envisioned classroom environments that build upon students’ linguistic resources. Focusing exclusively on students’ translanguaging through talk and text, however, falls short of capturing the range of semiotic resources that act as “affordances” for language development: the relationships between learners and aspects of the environment that facilitate meaning-making (van Lier, 2000, 2004, 2010). Understanding affordances requires an ecological perspective on language, which assumes that phenomena must be examined holistically. Affordances, then, include translanguaging but also consider students’ meaningful engagement with a range of resources in the classroom ecology. This paper argues the potential of an affordances perspective to offer new insight to teachers and researchers seeking to better understand students’ language development.

Author

• Nora W Lang, San Jose State University