Second Graders' Translingual Composing: How and Why Children Write Using Multiple Languages

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: A Close Look at Writing Processes, Language Choices, and Its Instruction for Children Through Young Teens

Abstract

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-dominant schools that dismiss their multiple language resources. Drawing on a translanguaging lens, this paper explores how second-grade students used multiple named languages while composing after being invited to draw on their full linguistic repertoires in an English-dominant classroom. Data were drawn from a year-long ethnographic observation of a teacher and students’ daily writing practices. Results from descriptive and thematic coding of student texts and videorecordings of interactions illustrate: 1) what translingual composing practices students engaged in, and 2) how and why students used translingual composing to achieve various social-interactional functions. The paper concludes with implications for pedagogy, arguing for writing instruction in English-dominant spaces that centers social functions of translingual writing.

Author

• Lindsey Rowe, Clemson University