This blog post by popular and well-regarded language educator Larry Ferlazzo addresses how the pedagogical process of translanguaging supports learners to access content, and how the learner uses translanguaging to navigate the target language and its culture. It consists of 20+ resources which include links to articles and other social media posts.
In this 2021 open access book from Cambridge University Press, the authors (Jason Cenoz and Durk Gorter) provide a comprehensive overview of how to apply pedagogical translanguaging in language and content classes. It explores the value of tapping into students' metalinguistic awareness and 'softens the boundaries' between the languages in student repertoires to enhance comprehension. It is a very helpful combination of both theory and practice which provides both the theoretical framework as well as specific pedagogical strategies and examples, such as how to assess student work when translanguaging has been used as a teaching/learning strategy.
This academic article from the City University of New York written by Sarah Vogel and Ofelia Garcia presents the evolution of the debate associated with translanguaging within language education and academia. The authors explain the historical colonial perspective that privileged monolingual dominant language speakers and maintained linguistic hierarchies. They then describe the theoretical evolution which demonstrated the value of leveraging the learners' prior linguistic learning (from their L1) to scaffold and enhance their engagement and comprehension of complex content in the target language. The authors do not shy away from addressing the perceived extra demand upon teachers that is required to use translanguaging in the classroom.
This 2022 academic article (by Jerry Won Lee) describes how applied linguistics researchers have been limited in their assessment of translanguaging in the classroom, by methodologies that bias their conclusions. He feels that unimaginative approaches to researching translanguaging has resulted in an unfortunate dismissal of its value. He argues that very few research studies have addressed the complexities of pedagogical translanguaging or related it to the reality of pluralingualism inherent in human interaction globally.
This is a very accessible 5 minute video that connects the academic research on translanguaging with teacher practice. It emphasizes 'linguistic wealth' through harnessing all the languages in our students' repertoire. It also advocates for teacher modelling with respect to linguistic curiosity and metalinguistic awareness, and promotes the value of inter-language such as 'Spanglish'.
