Supporting the development of the bilingual lexicon through translanguaging: a realist review integrating psycholinguistics with educational sciences

Abstract

In this review, we evaluate the claim that translanguaging in the classroom supports the development of the bilingual lexicon by enhancing cross-linguistic transfer. To address this issue, we integrate findings from psycholinguistics and educational sciences in order to identify how effective pedagogical practices for monolingual children can be extended to pedagogical practices for bilingual children. We show that both monolingual and bilingual children benefit from teaching strategies that strengthen the mental connections between semantically and phonologically related words, and that for bilingual children, these strategies should support both within-and cross-language connections. We argue that by stimulating the use of the home language in the classroom, translanguaging strategies like multilingual label quests and multilingual reading and writing can strengthen cross-language connections and, thereby, facilitate cross-linguistic lexical transfer. For closely related languages, stimulation of the home language has the additional benefit of implicitly facilitating the transfer of cognate vocabulary. Explicit instruction about cognates could further stimulate the development of cognate awareness, but whether it also enhances vocabulary learning is still an open question.

Effective vocabulary interventions for young emergent bilinguals: A best‐evidence synthesis

“…These findings point to the importance of engaging in equitable practices when designing and implementing interventions, particularly moving on from ‘best practices’ derived from the monolingual literature and further examining how cultures and languages of multilinguals could be leveraged to improve reading and underlying language processes (Noguerón‐Liu, 2020). Despite the benefits of home language supports in available vocabulary intervention research with young emergent bilinguals, none of the available studies adopt a translanguaging theoretical lens and pedagogical approach to support EBs' content knowledge and concomitant vocabulary and in response to EBs' dynamic bilingual progressions in their language and literacy development (Bosma et al., 2023; Otheguy et al., 2015).…”

“…Recognising that positivist approaches highlighted in this review aim to establish generalisable patterns and follow the dominant paradigm informing the science of reading, future interventions could add qualitative (and perhaps formative) assessments and analyses to (quasi‐)experimental studies to examine language and literacy performances across languages and better reflect the approximations in EBs' vocabulary breadth and depth of knowledge. In the same vein, future research should design vocabulary interventions with a translanguaging theoretical orientation and pedagogical approach given the dynamic bilingual progressions found in EBs' language and literacy development to enhance their conceptual knowledge and underlying vocabulary (Bosma et al., 2023; García & Flores, 2013; Sohn et al., 2022).…”

The Role of Cognates and Language Distance in Simultaneous Bilingual Children’s Productive Vocabulary Acquisition

“…As similarities of this kind are likely more common between words from closely related languages than between words from distant languages, children speaking closely related languages may become less aware of cognates. Note that cognate awareness has also been related to metalinguistic skills (see e.g., Bosma et al, 2023;Chen et al, 2012), a topic we discuss in the next section.…”

Social robots in a translanguaging pedagogy: A review to identify opportunities for robot-assisted (language) learning

“…There are dozens of activities using students' first language (L1) which can be done within schools to support students' learning. Such activities include: focusing on similarities and differences between the L1 and second language (L2), allowing students to discuss assignments amongst each other in the L1, multilingual label quests (eliciting vocabulary items from students in multiple languages), use of multiple languages in book reading or writing, pre-teaching in the L1 (at home or at school), cognate comparison (comparing similar words in different languages), and target word explanations in the L1 (Ticheloven et al, 2020;Bosma et al, 2022). An issue in translanguaging is that teachers may not know how to engage students in multilingual activities or may be afraid to 'lose control' by allowing students to speak other languages.…”