Translanguaging Myths Deconstructed and Reconstructed

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Translanguaging Myths in World Language Education: What’s the Real Story and the Future?

Abstract

1. Objectives

This paper aims to debunk eight pervasive myths surrounding translanguaging and reconstruct a nuanced understanding tailored to world language education (WLE). By clarifying misconceptions and offering justice-oriented alternatives, we seek to empower WL educators to embrace translanguaging as a purposeful, inclusive pedagogy that affirms students’ multilingual realities.

2. Perspectives & Modes of Inquiry

In WLE, translanguaging reframes language learning as multilingual, multimodal, and multisemiotic (Li, 2018). Rooted in sociocultural, critical, and decolonial theories (García et al., 2021; Li & García, 2022), translanguaging positions students as agentive meaning-makers who draw on linguistic, embodied, and cultural resources. It affirms minoritized identities and opens up alternative ways of knowing, and being—reimagining WL classrooms as inclusive, dynamic, and justice-oriented spaces. Translanguaging pedagogy requires a critical stance, intentional design, and flexible instructional shifts that challenge dominant ideologies and rehumanize WLE (García et al., 2017).

By employing a systematic research synthesis (Norris & Ortega, 2007), we identified a gap in published scholarship related to translanguaging in WLE and categorized our findings within the frame of eight myths that also correspond to our experiences working with WL educators.

3. Conclusions & Significance

We identified eight myths around translanguaging in WLE that require rehistorying to provide multilingual learners with justice-and equity-empowered education:
Translanguaging hinders learning of the target language. ACTFL’s (2010) position statement on target language instruction based on cognitive perspectives on language learning perpetuates this myth.
Translanguaging pedagogy means knowing all of the language of your students. Reconstruction of translanguaging as a pedagogy that values and leverages students’ diverse ways of languaging (García et al., 2017; Ponzio, 2020) debunks this myth.
Translanguaging is just a new name for code switching. This myth detracts from the agency of learners to leverage their multisemiotic assets (Li, 2018) that empower them to transform expression (Flores, 2020).
Translanguaging is only for bilingual or multilingual students. Translanguaging strategies support all learners in their critical multilingual awareness (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021) and problem-solving (Tai & Wong, 2023).
Translanguaging does not require planning. Critically enacting intentional and spontaneous translanguaging (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017, 2020) and considering translanguaging design in lesson planning (García & Kleyn, 2016) reconstructs this myth.
Translanguaging makes assessment on content and language challenging, if not impossible. Large scale assessments designed through a monolingual lens (Schissel, et al., 2021; Steele, et al., 2022) perpetuate this myth and discount translanguaging in assessments (Troyan, et al., 2021; Wong, 2024).
Translanguaging is simply a crutch before someone learns a language. Subtractive views of bilingualism that view L1 as a hindrance for L2 acquisition (Cummins, 2005) minimize how translanguaging practices support complex understandings (Henderson & Ingram, 2018; Poza, 2018).
Translanguaging is not appropriate in WL contexts where input is limited. Viewing language learning in a vacuum crystallizes the belief that L1 usage or translanguaging impedes the L2 language learning process (Fang & Liu, 2020; Zhou & Mann, 2021).

By reconstructing these myths, we seek to empower WLE to pursue new histories in teaching and learning and to embrace critical and social perspectives that leverage the lived experiences of the students and teachers in the classrooms of today.

Authors

• Nicole King, University of Rhode Island

• Zhongfeng Tian, Rutgers University - Newark