Translanguaging as a Powerful Source for Developing a Multilingual Writerly Voice

• In Event: Reimagining the Future of Bilingual Teacher Education: Community and Field Visions, Policies, Pedagogies, and Praxis

Abstract

Writing, including multimodal composition, is a tool for thinking, learning, researching, expressing, arguing, communicating, reflecting, organizing, rethinking, imagining, wondering, and composing. In all of its forms, writing is a process that is about constructing meaning regardless of age. Multilingual students are often asked to participate in restrictive writing exercises that produce chunks of language that are more tied to language acquisition than to expression, criticality, and purposefulness. A translanguaging stance as a source of knowing invites the multilingual student to engage in a journey of becoming by developing a multilingual “writerly” voice as the norm. This poster will review the research and present ways translanguaging in writing can center multilingual writers to affirm and sustain their multilingual identities.

Authors

• Cecilia M. Espinosa, Lehman College - CUNY

• Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Brooklyn College - CUNY