2 Translanguaging

Concepts

• Bilingual (Grosjean, 1982, Baker, 2011): An individual who knows two languages. It comprises a wide continuum from someone who can only understand a second language to someone who is a fluent speaker of two languages.
• Translanguaging (García, 2011): All strategies used to communicate among people who don’t speak the same language. It includes translation, visuals, gestures, translation, live interpreters, simplified language, among others. In translanguaging, speakers not necessarily speak each other’s language, but at actively trying to communicate.
• Language courses (Ellis & Shintani 2014): Subjects areas or courses that intend to teach a language. They may involve teaching reading and writing using the native language of the mainstream community, as is the case of Language English Arts in the United States. Or may involve teaching a second language for the most of the mainstream community, such as Spanish, Chinese, or French.
• Content courses (Snow, & Genesee, 1989): Subjects, areas or courses that don’t intend to teach a language. For example, content courses include sciences, social studies, and math. The term “content courses” is used as opposed to “language courses.”
• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978): the right balance between the challenging and the easy that promotes learning. The middle point between what the learner knows and doesn’t know. The content should be at the same time challenging and feasible. The student should be able to do something on their own while being provided with the proper assistance to build their knowledge.
• Scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976):. In construction work, scaffolding is adding blocks to a structure to make a building of any sort. You need to build from the soil and bring gradually the bricks up.
• Differentiation for ELLs (Tomlinson, 2001): All strategies the teacher uses to support access to content in all disciplines to speakers of all languages. When the teacher uses translanguaging strategies intentionally to support bilingual’s access to content.
• Affective Filter: The amount of anxiety or stress that blocks the student from learning. The linguist Stephen Krashen in the 1980’s hypothesized that anxiety may block the learning of a new language. He called this blocking-anxiety as the “Affective Filter,” which works as the form of a filter that may be too tight or may be thin enough to let new learning pass through. The Affective Filter is there anyway, that means, it is normal and even desirable that students feel a bit of stress because learning is supposed to be challenging.

Your role as a teacher is to use strategies that help the student gradually thin out the Affective Filter. You can’t save the student from stress. You can’t save the student from negative experiences. However, you can help the students make sense of those experiences in a way that leads to learning. The worst experience for the student may have already happened in their home country, so any smile or affectionate approach may support this student into reducing the anxiety.

Strategies to support the student through their first-day anxiety

• Smile to them actively and hold eye contact.
• Hold their backpack for them, guide them with body language towards the expected seating.
• Use body language to guide them through the school or classroom.
• Speak any Spanish word you know.
• Let the student stay quiet if they need to, but acknowledge their presence with your gaze, smile, and body language.
• Speak short words in English, avoid long phrases.
• Support the student into socializing with their peers. If you walk the newcomer into a group of kind peers, they may start socializing at their own style.

DO’s and DON’Ts of Translanguaging

The following strategies summarize content in the book by Samway, Pease-Alvarez, & Alvarez, L. (2020). I highly recommend the reading of this book.

DO

1. Use the languages you know your audience speak: Even the little Spanish you learned from Duolingo may make a huge difference.
2. Use visuals: pictures, hand motion, demonstration, puppets, toys, theater, exaggerated gestures, American Sign Language, onomatopoeia, Google Translator, voice and text processors, among anything else you can imagine. All that seems choppy communication, but IT IS communication.
3. Use realia: Realia includes using the real objects you are referring too.
4. Talk slowly, with lots pauses and repetition: You may be nervous and try to rush your speech, but your student appreciates any pause and repetition.
5. Check for understanding in a subtle way: A pause with a brief face gesture may yield in your student a gesture response of confusion or understanding. The classic thumbs-up/thumbs-down strategy helps a lot.
6. Face the audience when you talk: The waves of your voice sound better if you point your mouth towards the audience.
7. Find your teacher voice: I wouldn’t say “speak loud,” but you may explore the power of your lungs and voice cavity to communicate in a larger space such as the classroom or the playground. Your voice is an important piece of connection for your students.
8. Teach isolated words or fixed sentences: Even if you are teaching science or something unrelated to language, teaching a fixed sentence that you will repeat a lot will help students a lot. E.g. “The planets rotate”=los planetas rotan. Then you say “Los planetas rotan alrededor del Sol,” “La Tierra rota sobre sí misma”…
9. Use a simple version of the language by speaking straightforward, short sentences.

DON’T

1. Don’t turn your back when you are talking: If you speak to the whiteboard, the whiteboard will listen.
2. Don’t talk fast: No one is rushing you to finish! The disengaged bilingual may start acting up.
3. Don’t rely on text: Your new prescholers won’t read your fancy translation
4. Never perform any type of assessment on a fresh newcomer: Don’t call on the scared Mexican to speak in front of the group, don’t perform assessment on someone’s first day of class
5. Don’t assume “how was your summer” is an easy question: Small talk is the most difficult speaking style for people of other cultures.
6. Never assume students know or understand something: They may be nodding with a smile while not understanding. Bilinguals are good at pretend-understanding.
7. Don’t assume students are disengaged because they don’t answer: They don’t answer just because they’re too scared or probably didn’t understand the question or direction.
8. Avoid your comfort zone. Scared teachers tend to remain standing on the same corner of the classroom looking at the students who warmly nod at them. Go outside your comfort space in the classroom and walk around as the powerful human being you are!
9. Try to avoid acronyms: That’s TMI so you need to shut up ASAP or I’ll give you a DUI

Bibliography