Abstract
This chapter offers a contextual background to the teaching of English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Australian universities. The discussion then turns towards the efficacy of conventional approaches to languages in education in the context of current diversities, and the role that code-switching and translanguaging may play in teaching English in Asian and Australian contexts. Whereas there has been a recent interest in the potential of translanguaging as a pedagogical approach (e.g. Canagarajah 2011; García and Li Wei 2014), there has been little documentary evidence of a systematic approach to two-way translanguaging (Chinese to English, and English to Chinese) in written assessment tasks in university courses. Here we report on a micro-study in which there has been a systematic pedagogical shift in the teaching EAL for the purposes of preparing students to use English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) at an Australian university. In this study, an approach that builds on each student’s bilingualism or multilingualism through practices of translanguaging is documented. We report on diagnostic coding and analysis of written assignments of students whose primary language is Chinese. We find a strong correlation between students’ written proficiency in Chinese and in English. We also find a strong correlation of students’ metalinguistic expertise in translation and their proficiency in their home language. We argue that the findings indicate value in shifting from a single objective to teach only English to the development of high level academic proficiency in both the primary language and English.
Keywords
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- 1.
We acknowledge the support for diagnostic coding of student writing in Chinese and English provided by the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at UniSA.
- 2.
We use the term primary language as an alternative to home language or first language. Since students may have several spoken languages, but only one written language, this refers to the primary written language.
- 3.
In 2015 we encouraged students to expand their horizontal (informal spoken or informal) repertoires (by learning additional languages from one another) whilst also focusing on developing their academic (vertical) repertoires in English and their primary language.
- 4.
We hoped to distinguish between the use of word-for-word translation and translation that involves adaptation and versioning. We understand versioning and adapting as a complex process that involves two-directional cognitive processes of translating back and forth to find suitable equivalences or substitutes and adapting expressions to suit the idiom or genre of the target language.
- 5.
Video material included multiple languages and sub-titles in English.
- 6.
Coding of the four tasks occurred independently from summative assessment and regular feedback. Students with languages in addition to Chinese accepted that owing to limited resources they would receive limited diagnostic feedback on their translanguaging practices.
- 7.
Our classroom observation data show that Malaysian students often act as language agents or brokers during tutorials in order to bridge communication gaps among students from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
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Heugh, K., Li, X., Song, Y. (2017). Multilingualism and Translanguaging in the Teaching of and Through English: Rethinking Linguistic Boundaries in an Australian University. In: Fenton-Smith, B., Humphreys, P., Walkinshaw, I. (eds) English Medium Instruction in Higher Education in Asia-Pacific. Multilingual Education, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51976-0_14
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