Examining the parameters of translanguaging in the context of Chinese bilinguals’ discourse practices

As Chinese-as-an-additional-language (CAL) practitioners actively seek to bridge the language-culture divide in class instruction and curriculum, various strategies have been adopted to integrate cultural components into traditionally defined “language courses” or vice versa. However, many such strategies follow a “monolingual approach” that views L1 primarily as a source of interference in second language acquisition (SLA). Recognizing the importance of L1 use in additional-language classrooms, this paper proposes to apply the theory of translanguaging as the underlying pedagogy of CAL courses that holistically integrate language, culture, and intercultural learning. This approach fully recognizes students as multilingual and multicultural learners by judiciously and strategically combining L1 and L2 in order to maximize the growth of students’ overall linguacultural proficiency. The paper presents two course examples to discuss the implementation and benefits of this approach: a course on Chinese calligraphy for students with intermediate proficiency in the Chinese language and a course on Sino-US intercultural communication for students with advanced proficiency. These courses demonstrate that the translanguaging approach facilitates in-depth intellectual inquiries and critical thinking and encourages Chinese language learning in an interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interactive context. The paper concludes by extending the vision of translanguaging to the overall CAL curriculum and discussing its implication for the field.

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