Translanguaging as Dynamic Activity Flows in CLIL Classrooms

ABSTRACT

In this article, the role of translanguaging in facilitating content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is examined in connection with the notion of academic language across the curriculum in multilingual contexts. Ethnographic naturalistic observations and interviews were conducted to analyse translanguaging in the dynamic flow of interactions among South Asian ethnic minoritized students and their science teacher in a CLIL classroom in Hong Kong. The analysis shows that despite dominant school and government policies that impose a monolingual medium of instruction, translanguaging naturally flows from the dynamic interactions and activities in the classroom as both teacher and students are intensely engaged in meaning making about the lesson topics. Drawing on a recent theoretical explication of translanguaging and flows, the notion of translanguaging is further explicated with new theoretical and empirical import from the distributed language view. Pedagogical implications for CLIL are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Content and language integrated learning (CLIL)
• distributed language view
• science classroom discourse
• South Asian ethnic minoritized students
• translanguaging and flows

Notes

^1. In this study, “familiar languages” is not limited to one’s home language or community language, but may include all language resources that language users are familiar with and have access to (e.g., popular cultural expressions).

^2. In this article, S1, S2 … Sn refer to the first, second … n^th student who spoke in a particular lesson excerpt. Hence, the S1, S2 … Sn may be different students in different lesson excerpts. T refers to the teacher, i.e., Miss Yip, and Ss refers to students who spoke together.

^3. 咗, pronounced as “lap1 zo2,” is an everyday Cantonese phrase. “凹” (lap1) means dented, and“咗” (zo2) is a function particle in Cantonese indicating the perfective aspect (similar to the perfect tense in English).

^4. According to www.dictionary.com, the word oonth, pronounced as /ʊnt/, is a noun meaning camel in Indian dialect. In this study, we interviewed two SA students who had attended the lesson and they both spelt the word oonth for the meaning of camel.

⁵ According to the few teachers in the school who are from the same ethnic minoritized community as the SA students, although the young generation can speak their home language fluently, most of them, like the students in this study, do not know how to read or write their community language.