“Our country has gained independence, but we haven't”: Collaborative translanguaging to decolonize English language teaching

Abstract

The colonial history of many English language teaching (ELT) contexts has shaped how the concept of language is understood, how language policies are constructed, and how language education is organized. Various aspects of ELT in countries that were colonized continue to promote the imperialism of English (Motha, 2014) through the naming (i.e., labeling of linguistic phenomena as distinct languages, dialects, and language varieties), separation and hierarchization of languages, and the dominance of monolingual policies and practices in the classroom. Translanguaging, a theory and pedagogy that challenges colonial understandings of language and monoglossic norms in language teaching, has the transformative potential to liberate language practices that have been rendered invisible by abyssal thinking in ELT (García et al., 2021). Translanguaging as a theory posits that multilingual learners do not possess two or more autonomous language systems but rather that they select and deploy linguistic features from a unitary linguistic repertoire (Vogel & García, 2017). Translanguaging as a pedagogy urges educators to leverage learners’ entire linguistic and semiotic repertoires to support their learning instead of requiring them to keep certain languages outside the classroom. However, in educational contexts that respond to socially and politically imposed boundaries between languages, there are ideological and systemic challenges to the enactment of translanguaging as a pedagogy. This paper discusses these challenges with reference to the Malaysian language education context and draws on data from a collaborative translanguaging pedagogy designed through teacher-researcher collaboration and implemented in two Malaysian elementary English classrooms to offer recommendations for how ELT can be decolonized.

Sustaining Critical Approaches to Translanguaging in Education: A Contextual Framework

“…Ofelia Garc ıa and Li Wei's conceptualization of translanguaging pedagogy is thus political (e.g., Garc ıa et al, 2021), aiming to promote language practices of linguistically minoritized students that have been rendered invisible by "abyssal thinking" (see also Rajendram, 2022). However, this stance does not characterize all translanguaging research in education.…”

“…Therefore, the first principle of our framework for researching translanguaging with attention to context is (1) not to do so apolitically. For example, Rajendram's (2019Rajendram's ( , 2021aRajendram's ( , 2021bRajendram's ( , 2022) study highlighted how language policies and race politics influenced the languaging of fifth-grade Malaysian-Indian students in two English classrooms in Malaysia. Although at least 137 languages are spoken in Malaysia, Rajendram analyzed how certain forms of bi/multilingualism (e.g., bilingualism in English and Malay, the national language) were privileged over others, even in the "bottom up" interactions of the students themselves.…”

“…The first principle of our framework is to recognize translanguaging pedagogy as rooted in a political stance that is “reconstitutive of power relations between groups of language users with differentiated access to symbolic capital through entitlement/non‐entitlement” to “different named languages, language varieties, or genres” (Wei, 2022, p. 175). Ofelia García and Li Wei's conceptualization of translanguaging pedagogy is thus political (e.g., García et al., 2021), aiming to promote language practices of linguistically minoritized students that have been rendered invisible by “abyssal thinking” (see also Rajendram, 2022). However, this stance does not characterize all translanguaging research in education.…”

“…Collectively, we have used a number of methods for analyzing micro‐ and meso‐level interactions in the classroom, including interpretive phenomenological analysis (Ho & Tai, 2020), multimodal conversation analysis (Tai & Wei, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c), digital multimodal composing (Ho, 2022), sociocultural discourse analysis (Rajendram, 2019, 2021a, 2021b, 2022), and linguistic ethnography (Hamman, 2018a, 2018b; Hamman‐Ortiz, 2020, 2023; Mendoza, 2023). In what follows, we discuss each of these approaches in turn.…”

Innovative Design of English Teaching Mode for Water Resources Majors Based on Smoothed Long and Short-Term Memory Network Models

“…In order to strengthen international cooperation and communication in this field, continuously receive international advanced technology and research results, and improve the technical level of China's water conservancy and water resources, students of related majors must strengthen their professional English proficiency and, most importantly, to improve their English language proficiency [4][5]. Under the background of global economic integration, the scale of international mobility of engineering talents is expanding, and the market demand for talents who are proficient in professional business and have strong foreign language ability is growing, which makes the field of engineering and technology education in China face new opportunities and challenges and especially puts forward higher requirements for English teaching of science and technology majors in colleges and universities [6][7].…”