Translanguaging is a powerful mechanism or a strategic language
option of bilinguals to express experiences, to construct understandings and to
interpret their bilingual reality
through the daily use of the two languages (Garcia, 2009).
García (2009; 2011) views translanguaging - “or
engaging in bilingual or multilingual discourse practices” (2009, p. 44) - as
an approach to bilingualism that is centred not on languages, but on the
observable, natural communicative practice of bilinguals and, if properly
interpreted and understood and practiced in schools, as a means to enhance
pupils’ cognitive, language and literacy abilities:
Translanguaging includes code-switching, the shift
between two languages in context, and it also includes translation; however it differs
from both of these simple practices in that it refers to the process by which
bilingual students perform bilingually in the myriad ways of classrooms – reading, writing, taking
notes, discussing, signing etc.
Translanguaging is not only a way to ‘scaffold’
instruction, to make sense of learning and language; rather, translanguaging is part of the
metadiscursive regimes that students in the twenty-first century must perform
(García, 2011, p. 147)
References
García, O.
(2009). Bilingual education in the 21st
century: a global perspective.Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
García, O. (2011). Educating New York’s
bilingual children; constructing a future from thepast. International
Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 14, 2: 133-153