Do minority-language and majority-language students benefit from pedagogical translanguaging in early foreign language development?

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students’ minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test design, we evaluated the effects of PTL on English vocabulary, grammar, and metalinguistic awareness. The longitudinal results show significant gains for both majority-language and minority-language students across all competences. Yet, the PTL group did not outperform a comparison group that received regular, i.e. target-language-only EFL teaching. We critically discuss the scope and potentials of PTL in early FL teaching.

An analysis of note-taking strategies: The effect of translanguaging on content comprehension and knowledge retention

“…Additionally, participants' previous study experience does not impact content comprehension and retention ability. Importantly, this study showed that the translanguaging approach does not outperform the single language approach as far as educational outcomes are concerned, which is supporting the findings of other researchers (Chalmers, 2019;Hopp et al, 2021). Lastly, teachers should decide on the note-taking language to be used based on the purpose of the notes.…”

“…However, based on the current study, the benefits of translanguaging in note-taking are limited. Furthermore, other studies (Chalmers, 2019;Hopp et al, 2021) have also claimed that L2 acquisition is not affected by translanguaging. Therefore, schools and teachers should critically evaluate the effectiveness of using translanguaging if they have similar conditions as in this study.…”

“…One of the specific goals of the study is to investigate the educational effects of using translanguaging in notetaking. Chalmers (2019) and Hopp et al (2021) found that a translanguaging approach did not boost or hinder students' vocabulary knowledge and foreign language development. However, a translanguaging guide for educators wrote by Hesson et al (2014, p. 4) clearly stated that "All students would benefit from the translanguaging instructional contexts and strategies offered."…”

Translanguaging

“…-Reading a text in one language and summarising it or discussing it orally in another language (Jones, 2017;Williams, 1994). -Free flow of languages in a session (Yasar & Dikilitas, 2022) -Drawing attention to cognate forms (Arteagoitia & Howard, 2015) -Vocabulary teaching (Busse et al, 2020) -Using resources from different languages in the same class so as to develop metalinguistic awareness (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022) -Wordplay (Nicolarakis & Mitchell, 2023;Li, 2022) -Use of glosses in L1 in the margins of an L2 text (Anderson, 2022) -Contrastive analysis of grammar points (Hopp et al, 2021), phonological awareness (Hopp et al, 2021) or derivational morphology and compounding (Leonet et al, 2020) -The use of computer games and multimodal cues (including gestures) to enhance understanding of mathematics (Tai & Li, 2021) -Translation and interpreting (Heugh et al, 2019) To this long but not exhaustive list of operationalisations we might add publications in the field of linguistic landscaping, because translanguaging can be expanded to this field too (Gorter & Cenoz, 2015). This is no doubt the case, but it should be pointed out that the seed for the expansion of the meaning of the term translanguaging to spaces outside the classroom can already be found in Williams' comment that bilingual language use in the classroom reflects bilingual practices in everyday life of bilinguals.…”

The effect of multilingual pedagogies on language aptitude: A study on lower secondary school students based on the LLAMA test

“…Other studies investigated multilingual pedagogies, and especially translanguaging (Garcıá, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017) in relation with metalinguistic awareness: some of them, assuming a qualitative perspective, underlined that students attending programs in which emergent bilingual students have been allowed to employ their entire language repertoires in cognitively engaging school activities (like reading, analysing, elaborating, and producing content-related texts) enhance interlinguistic comparisons and metalinguistic understandings of different writing systems (Velasco & Fialais, 2018). Other studies, following a more quantitative orientation, showed that both majority and minority students exposed to multilingual instruction leveraging on the students' entire linguistic repertoires have positive outcomes on the development of the ability to reflect on language functions and forms (Hopp, Kieseier, Jakisch, Sturm, & Thoma, 2021). However, most studies related with multilingual pedagogies and translanguaging have focused on beneficial effects in terms of beliefs, attitude, and social inclusion (Carbonara & Scibetta, 2020;Duarte, 2020;Juvonen & Källkvist, 2021).…”