‘Nabewa nabedayo!’: Foreign faculty members’ perceived need to learn the students’ L1

ABSTRACT

This paper is part of an ongoing research project that examines translanguaging practice in predominantly monolingual social domains, and it reports on the views and practices of non-Japanese English teachers’ translanguaging in Japanese higher education. Fifteen faculty members from four universities were interviewed about their perspectives on translanguaging and their reasons for supporting or rejecting the practice. Additionally, the participants were asked about their views on the necessity of acquiring proficiency in the learners’ mother tongue (L1). A thematic analysis of the interview data indicated that translanguaging is prevalently and purposefully implemented for pedagogical and sociocultural purposes in and out of the classroom. Affective benefits were also identified that underline foreign teachers’ desire to establish close rapport with their students. All participants agreed on the necessity of foreign teachers being proficient in the students’ L1, including because proficiency increases cultural literacy. The lack of cultural literacy likely necessitates repeated requests for elaboration of culture-laden lexis such as ‘nabe’, to which frustrated students with limited proficiency could only counter, ‘Nabewa nabedayo!’ [Nabe is nabe!]. The findings suggest the need to develop theorised translanguaging pedagogies that can help teachers make strategic language choices for optimal learning outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• language choice
• EMI
• monolingual society
• Japanese higher education

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Li Wei and the anonymous reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts and particularly for their thoughtful take on the focus of this work. I am equally grateful to the participants who shared their stories and insights, which helped me rethink some of the stubborn notions that I had been clinging to for many years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Sugene Kim

Sugene Kim is an associate professor of English studies at Nagoya University of Commerce & Business in Japan. Her research specialisations are in academic writing, pedagogical grammar, and second language (L2) acquisition. She is particularly interested in examining the cognitive and linguistic strategies utilised by adult L2 learners to address writing difficulties in different rhetorical contexts. She has published in academic journals – such as International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, ELT Journal, and International Journal of Lexicography – mostly concerning L2 writing pedagogy and literacy development.