Plurilingual pedagogy in the Japanese language classroom: benefits and challenges for creating more equitable classroom practices

ABSTRACT

Increasing linguistic and cultural diversity has led to an increased need for plurilingual pedagogy in the language classroom. This study expands the scope of the existing literature on plurilingual pedagogy in a different context: a Japanese language classroom at an English-medium instruction (EMI) university in Japan. It focuses on students’ perceptions of the use of multiple languages in class. Twenty intermediate learners of Japanese participated in five translation sessions, in which they were occasionally given the task of translating text from Japanese to any language of their choice, including languages that the teacher did not know. Post-session interviews were thematically analysed to investigate the students’ perceptions of these sessions. The results indicated a change in the balance of power that had previously been taken for granted in the classroom. All students whose first language (L1) was not English appreciated the plurilingual translation class due to ‘comfort’ and ‘diversity’, along with other aspects; however, half of the L1 English students gave neutral or negative feedback, stating that they did not gain much knowledge or that English should be prioritised. The pedagogical implications of this study will be discussed in order to help create equitable classroom practices at an EMI university.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• plurilingual pedagogy
• Japanese
• intermediate-level
• plurilingualism
• English-medium instruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS: [grant number 17K13486,20K13079].

Notes on contributors

Eiko Gyogi

Eiko Gyogi is currently an assistant professor at Akita International University in Akita, Japan and will start as an associate professor at Okinawa University, Okinawa, Japan in April 2022. She teaches various undergraduate Japanese language courses. She obtained a Ph.D. in Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her research interests include translation in language teaching, pragmatics, and heritage language education.