#languageteaching – Educational Sociolinguistics

What’s the difference?

Rahman.S.
Plurilingualism and Translanguaging

Plurilingualism, translanguaging, pluriculturalism were all new terms that I was introduced to in the first year of my MA in Second Language Education program.

Plurilingualism is a theory that aims to recognize an individual’s entire repertoire, but also takes into consideration their pluricultural background (Li, 2018 & Piccardo, 2019). Code switching generally refers to a linguistic strategy by speakers using two languages where the properties of those languages mainly remain separate from the other language (Herk, 2018 & Li, 2019). On the other hand, translanguaging is a strategy used by language learners to make use of their plurilingual background and is different from code switching. The boundaries of language structure in translanguaging between languages are often blurred and therefore more transfer happens between other languages (Li, 2018). Both code-switching and translanguaging occurs daily in a multilingual city like Montreal where multiple languages are spoken.

Some examples that I have observed are the following:

Code-switching:

“C’est pas comme ca. Tu dois faire ca en premier and then after press down here.” (It’s not like this. You need to first do this and then after press down here.”) [French and English]

“Eomma, ulli meonjeo mowhanenengeoya? Are we going to eat breakfast?” (Mom, what are we going to do first? Are we going to eat breakfast?) [Korean romanized and English]

Translanguaging:

“No, I am bahs-ing the kapoor right now. Ami poray jabo.” (No, I am folding the clothes right now. I’ll go later.) [English and Bangla]

As an individual with different languages in my repertoire and as a teacher who has worked with plurilingual students, I always find it interesting the way we all employ language. In many language learning institutions and educational settings, there is a push to achieve a ‘native’ like proficiency in the language being learned. However this standard, as I have observed and from my own personal experience, puts a strain on learning a new language and can often cause frustration. I have noticed this particularly with my older English language learner students in elementary school. Parents’ expectations along with peer pressure often places an added stress factor in the language learning process.

Implications for Teaching

In order to offer an alternative I think we should look at language teaching from a plurilingual approach. By doing so, we are validating all the languages a student has as an important resource for learning a new language. Students use code switching and translanguaging on an everyday basis and by allowing students to use these strategies in the classroom, it can be a useful tool to help students communicate while they are developing their proficiency in the new language.

Below is an example of how students are using their knowledge of language in English and Spanish to further and deepen their understanding of how language works.

Know Your Terms: Code Switching

This clip is an example of code-switching. In the clip, you will notice that in both instances English is being used, but a different variation. I think it’s important to remember that code-switching or having a plurilingual background does not only consist of one language, but all the variations as well. As educators we can use this remind our students that even though they may speak only one language, they still have a plurilingual background consisting of different language knowledge.

-Can you think and describe of an example of code-switching and/or translanguaging that you used?
-Why did you use that (code-switching/translanguaging) in that particular instance?

References

Herk, G. V. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Li, W. (2018) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied
Linguistics, 39(1), 9–30.

Piccardo, E. (2019). “We’re all (potential) plurilinguals”: Plurilingualism as an
overarching holistic concept. Cahiers de L’ILOB, 10, 183–204.

Becoming a Language Ethnographer

Michelle Lefebvre

I was recently reading an article about code-meshing when I came across this piece of advice: “Become a language ethnographer: Complete a neighborhood walk and document the multiple languages in your school community” (Zapata & Laman, 2016, p. 368).

This article describes several classrooms where teachers encourage their students to use all of their languages. To do this, these teachers bring in dual language books and invite members of the community to give presentations to the class in different languages. The authors argue that this inclusive approach better reflects how students use language and that students are more engaged in literacy tasks when they are able to use language creatively in order to express themselves (Zapata & Laman, 2016).

The authors of this article suggest that if teachers want to adopt this kind of approach, becoming a language ethnographer might be helpful. Personally, I think they’re right. Surely knowing more about the languages spoken in my community will make me a more effective, democratic teacher.

While I’m not currently teaching in a school I do hope that one day I will be able to enact this kind of approach. Plus it’s sunny and I’ve been cooped up all day, so I’m setting off to find out which languages (besides English and French) are represented in my neighbourhood.

The first thing I noticed was that this was kind of hard; there are a lot of languages in my neighbourhood and I didn’t recognize some of them. But, with the help of Google translate, here is what I found:

On a Covid-19 public health information poster, I saw Filipino, Vietnamese, Chinese, Yiddish, and Persian.
I saw many signs written in Malayalam and Tamil on South Indian restaurants and grocery stores. I also saw Tamil on the signs of a jewelry store and a salon.
The sign outside of a synagogue was written in Hebrew.
Inside a supermarket, I found signs and labels written in Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese.
The sign on a grocery store was written in Russian.

I think that being more aware of the languages in my neighbourhood could be the first step in building a bridge between the community culture and the school culture.

So, are you ready to become a language ethnographer? Do you think it provides teachers with useful information? What impact could incorporating elements of students’ cultural backgrounds in the classroom have?

Reference

Zapata, A., & Laman, T. T. (2016). “I write to show how beautiful my languages are”: Translingual writing instruction in English-dominant classrooms. Language Arts, 93(5), 366-378.

Who is this “we”?

Michelle Lefebvre

Have you ever thought about how you explain new grammar points to your ESL class? How about the way you give corrective feedback? I noticed something about the materials I use in my own teaching practice, and once I noticed it I started seeing it everywhere.

I want to talk about the word “we”.

This past summer I took on part-time a job as a content editor for an e-learning platform. My job was to read through all of the introductions to new grammar points and try out all of the exercises to make sure there were no errors. I noticed that every time the platform introduced something or offered feedback it used the word “we”. Things like: “We never say fastly”, or “We use the present progressive tense to talk about actions that are happening now”. It started to bother me a little. The thing is, once I noticed it, I realized I was saying the same kind of things to my own students too! That made me even more upset. Here’s why.

Who am I referring to when I say “we”? The more I thought about it, I realized that this “we” is probably referring to speakers of “standard” English. You may be thinking, “Okay, so what? Shouldn’t English teachers teach “standard” English?” The problem is that “standard” English has less to do with the language itself, but rather with who is speaking the language (Lee & Handsfiled, 2018).

Language education cannot be separated from social and political factors (Wiley & Lukes, 1996). That’s because language is a social construct and dominant groups position their language variety as the model in order to promote the idea that their language and culture are superior (Wiley & Lukes, 1996). “Standard” English is an excellent (maybe the best) example of this in our society.

Most linguists agree that what is considered “standard” English is based on the communicative norms of upper and middle class white people (Young, 2009). What’s really annoying about this is that “standard” English was completely made up in order to marginalize and oppress people. What’s more, the majority of English speakers don’t even speak this manufactured “standard” English (Lee, 2014).

So, what do you think? Could using the word “we” be reinforcing dominant or standard language ideologies? Does it imply that language learners need to learn “standard” English in order to gain access to this mythical club?

For more information on inclusive language visit: https://consciousstyleguide.com/articles/

References

Lee, A. Y., & Handsfield, L. J. (2018). Code‐meshing and writing instruction in multilingual classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 72 (2), 159-168.

Lee, M. E. (2014). Shifting to the world Englishes paradigm by way of the translingual approach: Code‐meshing as a necessary means of transforming composition pedagogy. TESOL Journal, 5 (2), 312-329.

Wiley, T. G., & Lukes, M. (1996). English‐only and standard English ideologies in the US. Tesol Quarterly, 30 (3), 511-535.

Young, V. A. (2009). “Nah, we straight”: An argument against code switching. JAC 29 (1-2), 49-76.