Say It in Your Language: Supporting Translanguaging in Multilingual Classes

Abstract

Emergent bilingual students draw on their linguistic repertoires, moving fluidly between named languages and varieties to meet communicative ends. However, these translanguaging abilities are often not supported in English-dominant school settings. The author proposes six design principles that educators can use to create instructional strategies that support emergent bilinguals’ translanguaging in the classroom. The author then describes an instructional activity that was created and implemented following the design principles. During this activity, second-grade emergent bilingual students used tablets to record and share multilingual e-books. As a result, not only were students’ translanguaging abilities supported, but students were also able to create bilingual written texts and develop strategies to effectively translate for one another.