Challenging the Monolingual Norm in China's EFL Education: One English Teacher's Translanguaging Instinct and Practices

• In Event: Cultivating Bi/multilingual Learners' Full Range of Knowledge(s) and Skill(s): The Promise of Translanguaging Spaces

Abstract

Translanguaging as a theory and pedagogy of literacy education has gained increased attention in recent years, given its capacity to help students learn better about subject area content and develop their thinking about writing (Fu, Hadjioannou & Zhou 2019; Velasco & Garcia 2014). However, the relevance and application of translanguaging to EFL contexts have been underexplored. This study examined how the participant teacher Ms. D taught the writing unit of An Unforgettable Experience by drawing upon her and the students’ shared bilingual resources. It documented the specific ways in which the teacher translanguaged with the Chinese L1 and English L2.

We conducted a single case study to explore the teacher’s translanguaging practices in her teaching of writing in the context of a suburban school in Shanghai. Three types of data were collected, including videotaping of three writing lessons, formal semi-structured interview with the teacher, and student writing samples. The data were analyzed both inductively and deductively. We first watched the classroom observations and generated descriptive codes that capture the essence of the data. Then we organize, synthesize, and categorize the descriptive codes into analytic codes with the lens of translanguaging. Two major themes emerged from our data analysis: (a) translanguaging to meet the instructional needs and (b) the teacher’s translanguaging instinct and the monolingual testing.

Throughout the three lessons taught by the teacher Ms. D, we found that even though she wasn’t consciously applying translanguaging pedagogies in the teaching of writing, she naturally drew upon linguistic resources from both Chinese and English as she helped students brainstorm writing ideas and discussed writing contents and crafts with the students. Our findings revealed that the teacher’s translanguaging practices in writing instruction were situated in the different teaching needs and were differentiated based on the linguistic and cognitive demands of the specific instructional contexts. Through translanguaging, the teacher was able to better facilitate the students’ thinking, development of writing skills, and practices of English language skills. However, we also found that the monolingual norm at the center of EFL education in China placed constraints on the teacher to further expand her translanguaging, as she conformed to “English-only” in students’ written drafts, which illustrated the conflict between the teacher’s flexible bilingual teaching practices and the top-down monolingual policy in EFL education in China. As the center of mediating the interaction between the larger sociolinguistic context and students’ learning, the teacher showed her sense of agency as a bilingual teacher by translanguaging in her writing instruction and taking into consideration her students’ learning needs. However, she was inevitably caught in-between the students’ linguistic realities and the dominant monolingual norm.

Our study contributed to the exploration of the flexible and dynamic learning space carved out by translanguaging practices in an EFL context. Through documenting the teacher’s practices via a translanguaging lens, we challenge the linguistic hierarchy and the English hegemony that have been dominating EFL education in China. Findings from our study may also provide research and practical implications for other bilingual educational contexts.

Authors

• Xiaochen Du, Jump! Immersion School

• Zexu Xi, University of Florida