Considering Affordances for Language Learning: Expanding Notions of Translanguaging in Newcomer Classrooms

• In Event: Science and Math Instruction in Bilingual Contexts

Abstract

This paper utilizes an ecological approach to explore affordances (van Lier, 2000, 2004) for language development among students in a high school biology course for newcomers. Findings demonstrate that students pooled a range of multilingual resources and engaged creatively with artifacts in the classroom environment to make sense of an activity on climate change. Students engaged in multilingual language and literacy practices considered translanguaging, as traditionally conceived (e.g. García, 2009; García & Li Wei, 2014; Creese & Blackledge, 2010), but they also drew on embodied practices and other semiotic resources sometimes excluded from discussions of translanguaging, such as indexicality and other gestures, as well as engagement with videos and scrap materials to collectively make meaning.

Author

• Nora W Lang, San Jose State University