ERIC Number: EJ1203949
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1367-0050
EISSN: N/A
Translanguaging in Chinese Foreign Language Classrooms: Students and Teachers' Attitudes and Practices
Wang, Danping
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, v22 n2 p138-149 2019
This article deals with the reality and complexity of emergent translanguaging in foreign language classrooms. The influx of international learners of Chinese has resulted in linguistically diverse classrooms, posing huge challenges to the monolingual teaching approach that prevails in most Chinese language classrooms. This paper explores what students and teachers think and do about translanguaging practices in beginners' classes in China's universities. A questionnaire survey of 201 students showed that over half of the sample population was inclined to a multilingual form of instruction, where they could draw on their linguistic resources for meaning negotiation. Results from semi-structured interviews with teachers revealed ambivalent attitudes towards classroom language choice. While some teachers found it difficult to accommodate multilingualism, others embraced this idea and have developed a translanguaging pedagogy. Lastly, classroom observation demonstrated translanguaging as a co-constructed dialogic approach, initiated by both teachers and students to keep the class communicative within the Confucius learning culture. This paper ends by offering suggestions for foreign language teachers to renew their knowledge on language learning as well as develop transformative student-teacher relationships in order to facilitate more creative pedagogy in foreign language education.
Descriptors: Chinese, Student Attitudes, Teacher Attitudes, Language Usage, Code Switching (Language), Teaching Methods, Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Classroom Communication, Confucianism, Creative Teaching, Language Attitudes, Foreign Countries, College Students, College Faculty, Language Teachers, Cultural Context
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A