Language Histories, Collaborative Translanguaging, and Community Repertoires: Language Learning Interactions in a Second-Grade Writing Workshop

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: Multilingual, Immigrant, and Refugee Students: Disrupting Linguistic Boundaries and Interrogating Normative Labels (Table 10)

Abstract

Using a collaborative translanguaging lens, this paper explores how second-grade students built and drew on a community language repertoire after being invited to write using multiple languages in an English-medium classroom. Data were drawn from a year-long, ethnographic observation of a teacher and students’ daily writing. Results from descriptive and thematic coding of students’ language learning interactions illustrate how the community repertoire was drawn on and constructed as students: 1) talked about their own and others’ language histories, 2) at times reproduced historical, macro-level discourses, and 3) interacted with peers and materials to learn language(s). Implications for theory and pedagogy are discussed, arguing that a focus on collaborative translanguaging offers a fuller and more promising view of classroom language learning.

Author

• Lindsey Rowe, Clemson University
  Presenting Author