Translanguaging in English for Specific Purposes Classrooms in the Chinese Context: Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions
Keywords:
translanguaging, spontaneous translanguaging, pedagogical translanguaging, plurilingualism, second language pedagogyAbstract
This article reports on a study examining teachers’ and students’ perceptions of pedagogical translanguaging in an EAP programme at an English-medium Chinese university. Twelve teachers and thirty-three students participated in this study and four types of data were collected; videotaping of class interactions, teacher interviews, stimulated-recall interviews with student and researcher’s field notes. Results reveal that teachers had mixed views about pedagogical translanguaging. A number of teachers could put positive beliefs about translanguaging into practice and their translanguaging strategies included scaffolding from students’ first language for construction and transmission of knowledge. Results also show that some students engaged in translanguaging both in class and out of class freely, but their perceptions of translanguaging appeared to be negative. This article concludes with a discussion of the challenge of pedagogical translanguaging in bilingual classrooms, pedagogical implications and directions for future research.
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