Creating a Hybrid Learning Space Through Translanguaging in a Heritage Language Classroom for Korean-American Students

• In Event: Translanguaging in Five Heritage Language Learning Spaces: Challenges and Affordances for Both Teachers and Learners

Abstract

Although the student demographics in the U.S. are becoming increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse, the everyday practices of transnational and immigrant students, including their cultural values, heritage, and traditions, are often not appreciated or explored in mainstream classrooms (Author, 2024; Compton-Lilly et al., 2019; Lagman, 2018). Due to the absence of resources to recognize and appreciate the cultural heritage and values of transnational or immigrant students in public schools in the U.S., community-based heritage language (HL) schools play a pivotal role in validating students from minoritized languages and communities by dismantling the barriers of linguistic inequalities to ensure educational equity (Author, 2025). The purpose of this study is to explore how the heritage language classroom (as a third space) (Bhabha, 1994) offers Korean bilingual students opportunities to employ translanguaging, enabling them to construct multiple identities.

Building on Bhabha’s (1994) concept of the Third Space, I propose a pedagogical approach to creating a linguistic Third Space (Flóres & García, 2013), where the dynamic translanguaging practices of bi/multilingual students are valued and honored. Translanguaging describes bi/multilinguals’ unique and fluid communicative strategy drawing on their entire linguistic knowledge and semiotic resources without limiting their language capabilities (Author, 2023; García et al., 2021; García & Kleifgen, 2019; Mendoza et al., 2023; Solorza, 2019; Tai & Wei, 2021). This study took place in a fifth-grade classroom at a Korean HL school in one of the southern states of the U.S., where second-generation Korean-Americans are enrolled. The classroom discourses were collected during the class participation in the Transnational Literacy Unit, which consisted of seven lessons that integrated reading and writing activities using transnational literature that portrayed diverse ethnic groups.

The findings reveal that the fluid classroom discourses during the Transnational Literacy Unit provided opportunities for the teacher and students to build and co-construct a hybrid and transformative third space where translanguaging, transnational funds of knowledge, and the construction of multifaceted identities coexist. The teacher believed that translanguaging was a normal and natural practice in her classroom, where bilingual learners interacted with one another. The teacher provided time and space for translanguaging, allowing her students to flexibly employ their linguistic resources when reading the books, discussing the storylines, sharing their thoughts and related experiences, and even thinking and organizing their ideas. For instance, the teacher encouraged her students to read books in both English and Korean and invited them to discuss the main idea and central insight of the story using both languages, drawing on their bilingual resources.

The teacher’s translanguaging instructional strategy encouraged students to make full use of their linguistic repertoire for richer engagement and deeper comprehension of the learning materials. The students’ responses suggest that they recognized their HL classroom as a hybrid learning space where the fluid employment of their language resources is validated and honored. The findings provide implications for educators to create Third Spaces in their HL classrooms as a way of valuing linguistic diversity and inclusion, thereby supporting students who navigate different language practices, perspectives, and ideologies.

Author

• Chaehyun Lee, Southeastern Oklahoma State University