Translanguaging flows in Chinese word instruction: Potential critical sociolinguistic engagement with children’s artistic representations of Chinese characters

ABSTRACT

Translanguaging (TL) theory underscores individuals’ agentive deployment of all semiotic resources to construct meaning, highlighting language as part of an integrated repertoire for communication. To explore the potential of pedagogical TL in Chinese vocabulary instruction, this paper focused on one Chinese Language Arts lesson from a larger study on TL pedagogies in a multiethnic Grade 3 Mandarin-English dual language bilingual education classroom in a U.S. public school. The teacher in this lesson provided an explicit instruction on word origins andknowledge and then students were encouraged to use their imagination to create visual narratives of different Chinese characters based on their orthography and semantics. We performed a fine-grained analysis of the teacher’s instructional practice and a multimodal analysis of children’s Chinese character art as a visual narrative. We found that the teacher engaged in TL practices, mobilizing a range of multimodal, multilingual and multisensory resources to facilitate the co-construction of meaning with students. We also saw that the students’ word art design – the crossing between linguistic and visual signs – index their funds of knowledge and sociocultural values, which could potentially open up spaces for more critical discussions on the complex intersections of language, culture and beliefs.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging flows
• Chinese word instruction
• multimodal deep processing
• creative and critical learning
• intra-activity
• whole-body sense making

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhongfeng Tian

Zhongfeng Tian, Assistant Professor of TESOL/Applied Linguistics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Theoretically grounded in translanguaging, his research centres on working with classroom teachers to provide bi/multilingual students with equitable and inclusive learning environments in ESL and dual language bilingual education contexts, and preparing culturally and linguistically competent teachers with social justice orientations. He co-edited two books: “Envisioning TESOL through a Translanguaging Lens: Global Perspectives” (Springer, 2020) and “English-Medium Instruction and Translanguaging” (Multilingual Matters, 2021).

Sunny Man ChuLau, Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University, Québec, is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning. She specializes in critical literacies, second language and plurilingual education, participative-based research methodologies, and related teacher education. She co-edited the book volume Plurilingual Pedagogies: Critical and Creative Endeavors for Equitable Language in Education (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020) and is a co-editor for Critical Inquiry for Language Studies.