How To Effectively Use Your Students' Linguistic Resources To Help Them Learn English
Students enter ESL classrooms knowing at least one other language. Here's how to leverage what they already know while celebrating their multilingualism.
Growing up, I was placed into Spanish classes in which it felt like I was re-learning how to introduce myself over and over again. That’s my recurring memory up until eleventh grade when I had the opportunity to jump a bunch of levels and take Spanish classes which could give me college credits. I seized that opportunity but was in a weird position because I went from re-learning how to introduce myself ten thousand times to suddenly reading Don Quixote in Spanish.
By that point, my Spanish vocabulary was pretty high (all thanks to my grandma and no thanks to my schooling). I could understand a good portion of the text, but the teacher would have us read the text completely in Spanish (hard), then cold call us to discuss the text in Spanish (super hard), and then have us answer writing prompts in Spanish (super duper hard).
While my level of Spanish was maybe lower than the class required, I’ve had tons of other language-learning experiences in which the teacher would call on me to discuss something in the target language, and I would feel my face get red and my words falter.
In those moments, I felt like a language learning failure. But after learning about translanguaging, I now feel like the monolingual teaching method was the real failure. In those classrooms, using only the target language was the most important thing. We’d read stories, and it wouldn’t matter if we only understood 80%. We’d spend ten minutes trying to more-or-less understand the teacher explain an unfamiliar word, a word which we would’ve better understood with a ten second translation.
Those experiences made it so that by the time I learned about translanguaging, the idea of using the students’ first language1 to help them learn the target language made intuitive sense to me. In this newsletter, I’m going to breakdown what translanguaging as a pedagogy is and how to incorporate it into your classrooms. Like last time, I’ll write to teachers because they make up most of the paid subscribers. But if you’re not a teacher you can learn how to use your linguistic resources to learn another language.
But first, translanguaging versus code-switching
Last week, I told you about my experiences as a Spanglish speaker. And the way I described Spanglish was from a code-switching perspective. I told you that I effortlessly can switch between two codes—English and Spanish—in the same sentence.
That’s a really different description than what we’re discussing today. Today we’re talking about translanguaging, which is both a theory of language and a pedagogy. As a theory of language, the key point to know is that under a translanguaging lens everyone has a single linguistic repertoire. Inside of our linguistic repertoire we may have features (like words or sounds) from named languages, like English. But under this lens, those named languages aren’t the focus (they’re merely sociopolitical realities which have created something we call ‘English’). The focus instead is on the speaker’s inner linguistic repertoire.
So if you listen to me speaking Spanglish from a code-switching perspective, you’d say that I’m switching between Spanish and English. From a translanguaging perspective, you’d say that I’m simply speaking using my complete repertoire (or even more simply, I’m speaking).
This is particularly important for how we approach translanguaging as a pedagogy because in translanguaging classrooms students enter with a whole linguistic repertoire (compared to the code-switching perspective in which students come in knowing 0% of the target language).
The main strength of translanguaging as a pedagogy is two-fold: 1.) it helps students make connections between all the language they know and the target language 2.) it helps students create a bilingual identity and see their place in a multilingual world.
Translanguaging as a Pedagogy
If we go back to the introduction, I wasn’t making any meaning from reading Don Quixote. Instead, I was flailing trying to grasp enough meaning to write an essay that would get me a good grade. I was stressed and confused. And I don’t think those feelings would’ve happened under a translanguaging approach.
A translanguaging approach is not simply translating for students. Instead, it’s a way of helping students make meaning leveraging what they already know.
In the next section, I’m going to go through teaching reading and writing through a translanguaging approach, helping students form a bilingual identity, and creating a translanguaging environment. I’m also going to leave links to activities and resources.
Translanguaging and Reading
When it comes to reading, making meaning has different levels: word level, sentence level, topic level. Regardless of the level of analysis, though, reading comprehension is a skill. And skills are not language specific: how well students comprehend texts in their first language is a good indication of how well they’ll comprehend texts in their second language. That’s why when you’re teaching reading comprehension, you’re teaching students the skill as well as the target language. To help students make meaning (and not feel overwhelmed), you can allow them to use their entire linguistic repertoire to build the skill of reading comprehension.
Word level: During the reading process, students might not recognize a word. As a class, you can use context clues to guess the meaning. You can also ask students if the word has a cognate in another language they speak. If that doesn’t work, you can encourage students to use a bilingual dictionary or—for more concrete words—a picture dictionary. And instead of just putting the translation, you can take it a step further. You can ask your students: Does this word exist in your first language? Is it used the same way? Is it a frequently used word?
Alternatively, you could build a practice of looking up the word history as a class. This way, students learn the Latin and Greek roots. Students who speak languages, like Spanish or French, may also recognize the root from their home languages. The idea is to help students recognize any parts of the words, whether it be from other words in English or other words across languages.
Sentence level: On a sentence level, you can find juicy sentences to discuss. While you’re breaking down the sentences, you can pin-point words which need further discussion. Once students understand the sentence on a word-level, you can explore the syntax of the sentence. If there’s a relative clause, for example, you can ask students if they form relative clauses in the same way in their home language. You can have them recognize any similarities and differences across the languages.
Topic level: On a topic level, you may create a pre-reading activity to elicit the students’ background knowledge on the topic. If this takes the form of a video, you can find a video in a language other than English. If this includes a Think-Pair-Share activity, you can have the students think and pair in whichever language and share in English (or you can do it all in whichever language).
There are a bunch of other vocabulary activities starting on page 165 of this guide. The sentence-level activities start on page 170. They’re worth checking out!
Translanguaging and Writing
Writing is a process. And the whole process doesn’t need to be in the target language. Here’s more-or-less the process:
Researching
Brainstorming
Drafting
Writing
Editing
Students’ writing is a reflection of their thoughts. For some students, it might be difficult to think, plan, and write completely in English. In a translanguaging classroom, you can allow students to prioritize their thoughts over the actual language (in terms of grammar or vocabulary). If they need to research before, you can give them the opportunity to research in a language other than English. During the brainstorming phase, they can use all of the languages they know. Maybe the organization of thoughts comes to them in one language. And then they can spend time brainstorming how they’d express those thoughts in English. When they draft, it might be easiest to let the writing flow in whichever language comes out (even if it’s a mix). And then after when they’re editing, they can express the strengths and weaknesses in whichever language.
The main point to remember is that writing is a skill. And skills are not language specific. So leveraging all languages to get better at the craft of writing can help students produce monolingual English texts.
Here’s an Instagram Live that I did awhile ago all about translanguaging and writing. Here’s the CUNY-NYSIEB guide to translanguaging and writing.
Activities to build a bilingual identity
Translanguaging takes multilingualism as its starting point. And it also creates an environment in which bilingual students no longer see monolingualism as the norm or the level to aspire to. To create that classroom, you can expose students to multilingual texts or videos (like this one) and have them explore why the author uses multiple languages—and how the use of multiple languages enhances the text. You can also have students recognize multilingualism in their communities by bringing in pictures of multilingual signs or flyers.
For the community project, you can see page 40 of this guide.
Creating a translanguaging classroom
Whether you teach online or in-person, you can find ways of celebrating your students’ multilingualism. If you teach online, you can use languages other than English in the greetings and endings of your emails (or throughout your emails). If you teach in-person, you can hang up posters which include multilingual word walls or cognates. If you play music before class starts, you can play music in different languages.
For examples of multilingual word walls or cognate charts, you can go to page 147 of the same guide. For more ideas, you can go to page 20.
Does this only work for classrooms in which everyone speaks the same two languages? Can only bilingual teachers use translanguaging?
As a monolingual teacher, you can absolutely use translanguaging. But you need to approach the classroom as a place in which you’re a co-learner, a place where you don’t have all the answers.
I’ve used translanguaging with my Chinese students even though I don’t speak Mandarin. I’ve integrated parts by including translations of vocabulary words or finding books which have the Mandarin translation. I send the translated version before class so that my students read it in Mandarin to grasp the overall meaning before we read it together in English. I also give them homework in the mix of the two languages. They reply to harder questions in Mandarin and then simplified versions in English. I rely on Google translate and online resources in ways that I don’t need to with my Spanish-speaking students. It’s a little more cumbersome for me, but the approach allows me to explore the readings with my students on a much deeper level than if it were all completely in English.
Discussion
Thanks so much for reading this newsletter! I would love to hear about your thoughts in the comments. Have you ever heard of translanguaging? Would you use it in your classroom? Do you know of any other helpful resources?
I use “first language” because most people are familiar with that term. But what I really mean is “dominant language,” or the language the students know best (it’s not always their first language).