Emergent Bilinguals' Collaboration in Designing and Producing Multimodal Texts: Translanguaging to Support Learning

• In Event: Developing Multi/Translingual Competencies and Expertise Through Peer Interactions: Affordances, Constraints, and Complexities

Abstract

Objectives
Collaborative strategies in the bilingual classroom are key to students’ authentic engagement and use of linguistic and cultural resources (Gort, 2008; Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, Alvarez, & Chiu, 1999). Peers play an important role for emergent bilinguals (EBs) in negotiating content-area knowledge (Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carrillo, & Collazo, 2004). We examine peer-to-peer interaction as supportive learning talk. We aim to explore the following questions: How are the Spanish and English language used in literacy practices? When children design and produce multimodal texts how does their discourse support language and content-area learning?

Theoretical framework
We draw from sociocultural theory to understand the influence of collaborative processes in meaning making. This framework considers young EBs’ interaction with and interpretation of the world. Thus, EBs use cultural and linguistic experiential knowledge to construct meaning with others (parents, teachers, peers) (Bauer & Gort, 2012). We take a dynamic bi(multi)lingual perspective, and use translanguaging theory (García & Wei, 2013) to understand EB students’ interaction. Finally, we consider multimodal theory to understand how individuals interact and engage with multimodal texts (Jewitt, 2008).

Methods
We carried out a semester-long case study of a dual language bilingual classroom (Marshall & Rossman, 2010) to understand emergent bilinguals’ engagement with multimodal texts across and within content areas. In particular, we focused on observing interactions between students when engaging with multimodal texts, using microanalysis of discourse (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2004; Dyson & Genishi, 2005).

Data sources
Following an ethnographic approach (Heath & Street, 2008), we audio- and video-recorded observations and took field notes during Spanish language arts and science/social studies classes for one group of 20 students in a 3rd grade dual language classroom, for approximately three hours, three to five days a week for four months to systematically note and record the ways that students and teacher interacted with/around multimodal texts.

Results
Spanish-dominant and English-dominant EBs mainly spoke in English when working in small groups when designing and producing multimodal texts, in line with previous research illustrating the English dominance of dual-language settings (Author, blinded). Yet, when using content-area words that had been explicitly taught, students used Spanish. Furthermore, the students translanguaged more during the design and distribution process which appeared to support their comprehension of content concepts. Translanguaging involved not only a range of linguistic registers but also the use of multiple modes for understanding content area knowledge (García & Wei, 2014).

Scholarly significance
Learning how collaborative structures work in the bilingual classroom helped us understand the function of translanguaging to support language and content learning (Henderson & Palmer,
2015). Designing and producing texts across content areas facilitated EBs’ navigation of biliteracy practices. Finally, in this classroom EB children and their teacher productively designed and produced new bilingual texts, diminishing prescriptive linguistic and instructional practices - with powerful impact.

Authors

• Lucia Cardenas Curiel, Michigan State University

• Deborah K. Palmer, University of Colorado Boulder