Translanguaging as pedagogy in a Chinese complementary school in the UK

This study investigates language teachers’ translanguaging practices in three Mandarin classes of a Chinese complementary school in the UK. It draws on the ideas of translanguaging as individuals’ deployment of their full linguistic repertoires, translanguaging as multimodal system, translanguaging as bilingual pedagogy, translanguaging as the embodiment of users’ sociocultural background, and examines current critical perspectives on translanguaging. The study explores the actual translingual practices deployed by class teachers in language classrooms and the factors that influence those practices. In the 2016/17 academic year, I conducted an eight-month ethnographic fieldwork study, collecting qualitative data in three phases: classroom observation, classroom audio recording and interviews with class teachers. This study has five main findings: (1) translanguaging is widely, efficiently and inevitably deployed in language classrooms of the Chinese complementary school, for the purposes of teaching Chinese language knowledge (characters, Pinyin and unique expressions), differentiating students with varying Chinese language abilities, and giving general instruction within teaching practices; (2) translanguaging facilitates class teachers’ other teaching practices (i.e. scaffolding, drills and translation); (3) class teachers make meaning by drawing upon their own and their learners’ wide range of semiotic resources, for example, embodied gestures, pictures, signs, mime and so on; (4) the use of translanguaging is influenced by teachers’ teaching content, their understanding of learners, and students’ responses in class; (5) the focus of teaching content in language education where societally named languages have to be treated separately challenges an orientation towards the translanguaging concept that describes individuals’ flexible use of their linguistic repertoire in language teaching contexts. Findings show that this tension might vary from class to class and teacher to teacher. The study concludes that translanguaging practice permeates into day-to-day language teaching practices in Chinese complementary schools. Compared to multililingual contexts, translanguaging is deployed critically by class teachers in language educational context.