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“Why Needs Hiding?” Translingual (Re)Orientations in TESOL Teacher
Education
Nelson Flores
Geeta Aneja
University of Pennsylvania
Though applied linguists have critiqued the concept of the native speaker for decades, it continues to dominate the TESOL profession in ways that marginalize nonnative English–speaking
teachers. In this article, we describe a naturalistic study of literacy negotiations in a course that
we taught as part of the required sequence for a TESOL teacher education program. The course
had the explicit goals of (a) supporting preservice teachers, many of whom are nonnative English
speakers, in challenging these native-speaker ideologies, and (b) introducing preservice teachers
to translingualism as a framework for challenging these ideologies with their own students. We
focus on one of the culminating projects, in which students developed their own projects that
enacted the new understanding of language associated with translingualism. By looking closely at
the journey of three students through this project, we shed light on the possibilities and challenges
of bringing a translingual perspective into TESOL teacher education, as well as the possibilities
and challenges confronted by preservice TESOL teachers who are nonnative English speakers in
incorporating a translingual perspective into their own teaching. These case studies indicate that
providing nonnative English teachers with opportunities to engage in translingual projects can
support them both in developing more positive conceptualizations of their identities as multilingual teachers and in developing pedagogical approaches for students that build on their home
language practices in ways that challenge dominant language ideologies.
Over the past several decades, applied linguists have questioned the privileging
of the native speaker as the model to which all language learners should aspire
(Graddol, 2006; Kachru, 1992; Phillipson, 1992; Rampton, 1990). Yet, despite these
critiques, native speaker ideologies continue to dominate the field, as seen in job
advertisements, curricular resources, and language assessments (Kumaravadivelu,
2016; Selvi, 2010). This continued privileging of native speakers is especially troublesome considering the increasing number of nonnative English speakers seeking to
become TESOL professionals, both in the United States and abroad. It has been
estimated that nonnative English–speaking teachers (NNESTs) outnumber their
native English–speaking counterparts three to one (Crystal, 2012). As the number
of nonnative English–speaking TESOL professionals has increased, so has their enResearch in the Teaching of English Volume 51, Number 4, May 2017
Copyright © 2017 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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rollment in TESOL teacher education programs in the United States (Kamhi-Stein,
1999). Research has demonstrated that such students face challenges in TESOL
teacher education programs, which are often unresponsive to their unique learning
needs (Braine, 2010; Kumaravadivelu, 2016; Liu, 1998; Samimy & Brutt-Griffler,
1999). Ironically, while native speaker ideologies have been stringently critiqued
in applied linguistics, these ideologies continue to permeate the teacher education
programs that prepare future nonnative English–speaking TESOL professionals.
This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature that challenges native
speaker ideologies in teacher education programs (Barratt, 2010; Brady & Gulikers, 2004; Lee, 2004; Liu, 1998). Specifically, we describe a course that we taught as
part of the required course sequence for a TESOL teacher education program that
had a large number of students who would traditionally be considered nonnative
English speakers.1 The article first provides an overview of the paradigm shift that
has occurred in applied linguistics and served as the theoretical foundation for
the course. It then gives an overview of the course, with a particular focus on the
sociocultural approach to teacher learning (Johnson, 2006) that was utilized to
introduce this paradigm shift to the preservice teachers who were taking the course.
The article then focuses on one of the culminating projects, in which students
read Canagarajah (2013) and developed projects informed by the translingual
orientation that he proposes as a rhetorical style that can counteract these native
speaker ideologies. We look closely at the journey of three students through this
project. The hope is to shed light on the possibilities and challenges of bringing a
translingual perspective into TESOL teacher education, as well as the possibilities
and challenges confronted by novice teachers who are nonnative English speakers
in incorporating a translingual perspective into their own teaching.
The Multilingual Turn in Applied Linguistics
Though applied linguists have always been interested in issues of language diversity,
scholars have recently brought attention to the monolingual bias that has informed
much of this work (García, 2009; Kachru, 1994; Ortega, 2013). This monolingual
bias has its origins in the rise of nation-state/colonial governmentality in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, part of the global geopolitical reconfiguration into
industrialized nation-states and the colonies they exploited for their raw materials
(Flores, 2013; Mignolo, 2011; Pennycook, 2002). This time period witnessed the
emergence of monoglossic language ideologies, which position monolingualism as the
norm to which all national subjects should aspire (Flores, 2013; García, 2009)—an
ideal that stands in sharp contrast to the multilingual practices that had been the
norm in previous eras of human history (Canagarajah, 2013; Yildiz, 2013). Part
of this ascendency of monolingualism was the emergence of the idealized “native
speaker” who was deemed to have inherited a particular national language as a
birthright and was endowed with the responsibility of protecting it from foreign
contamination (Bonfiglio, 2010).
Scholarship challenging the monolingual bias in applied linguistics has coalesced around a multilingual turn in applied linguistics (May, 2014). The mul-
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tilingual turn has reconceptualized language, transforming it from a bounded
object, whose borders are determined by idealized native speakers, into a fluid
social practice that can be molded by language users in ways that fit their needs.
Different terms attempting to describe this reconceptualization of language have
emerged, including metrolingualism (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015), polylanguaging
(Jørgensen, 2008), transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet, 2005) and translanguaging
(García, 2009). Each of these terms is an attempt to challenge dominant language
ideologies and to offer spaces for previously marginalized language users to assert
the legitimacy of their language practices.
The multilingual turn has already influenced language learning pedagogies
as applied linguists have reimagined language classrooms in ways that encourage students to use their entire communicative repertoire as they engage in new
language learning (Rymes, 2014). Cummins (2007) advocates the use of bilingual
instructional strategies “that acknowledge the reality of, and strongly promote,
two-way cross-language transfer” (p. 222), which includes a focus on cognates,
developing dual-language projects, and fostering bilingual pen pal relationships.
These bilingual instructional strategies have been found to increase students’ metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness in ways that improve their literacy skills
(Jiménez et al., 2015). García and Wei (2014) incorporate bilingual instructional
strategies under the broader concept of translanguaging, which positions the fluid
language practices of bi/multilingual students as the starting point for curricular
decisions made in contexts of language learning. Yet, they seek to go beyond the use
of bilingual instructional strategies as scaffolding for language learning in order to
re-envision language education in ways that “call forth bilingual subjectivities and
sustain . . . bilingual performances that go beyond one or the other binary logic
of two autonomous languages” (García & Wei, 2014, pp. 92–93). These bilingual
subjectivities allow students to develop sociocritical literacy that begins with their
lived experience and empowers them to appropriate and transform dominant
language practices as they are in the process of developing them (Gutiérrez, 2008).
From a translanguaging perspective, the goal of language development is no longer
for students to attain “native-like” proficiency, but rather for students to strategically choose features of their communicative repertoire in ways that reflect their
bi/multilingual identities and that accommodate their interlocutors.
The multilingual turn has also begun to reshape the content of teacher education. This teacher education research focuses primarily on identifying the knowledge that preservice teachers need in order to develop linguistically responsive
classrooms that are attuned to the language learning needs of their students (Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008). Hornberger (2004) offers the continua
of biliteracy as a heuristic that can be used in teacher education to “break down
the binary oppositions so characteristic of the field of bilingualism and literacy
and instead draw attention to the continuity of experiences, skills, practices, and
knowledge” (p. 156) that characterizes the lived experience of bi/multilingual children. Similarly, García (2008) argues for the importance of supporting preservice
teachers in developing multilingual awareness that will provide them with the
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tools for drawing on their students’ multilingualism in the classroom. The NNEST
movement (Braine, 2010) has also been instrumental in legitimizing the language
proficiencies and cultural backgrounds of nonnative English–speaking students in
teacher education contexts (Pavlenko, 2003; Samimy & Brutt-Griffler, 1999) and
in helping nonnative preservice teachers overcome perceived inferiority rooted
in the assumption of a native speaker ideal (Bernat, 2008; Suárez, 2000). Though
all of this work has been extremely important in identifying how we, as teacher
educators, can modify our content to challenge the monolingual bias, a remaining question is how we can modify our own pedagogical approaches in ways that
provide preservice teachers with models of how to enact transformative language
education in their own classrooms. That is, it is one thing for teacher educators
to provide preservice teachers with tools for challenging the monolingual bias,
and quite another for us to model how to counteract these biases through the
pedagogical approaches that we enact in our own classrooms.
An additional consideration for TESOL teacher education is how to prepare
preservice teachers for the reality that the monolingual bias continues to dominate
the profession. Many TESOL professionals who embrace the multilingual turn
may find its underlying principles in conflict with their primary responsibility
of preparing students to score well on standardized assessments based on nativespeaker norms (Hornberger & Link, 2012; Menken, 2008; Templer, 2004). In addition, TESOL professionals attempting to enact a translanguaging pedagogy may
confront language policies that create barriers for such pedagogical approaches
(Lin, 2013; Malsbary & Appelgate, 2016), as well as resistance from students and
families who prefer an English Only model of instruction (Crawford, 2000; Lee,
1999). Many nonnative English–speaking teaching professionals will also continue
to face hiring discrimination and feel pressured to sound like native speakers in
order to make themselves employable (Clark & Paran, 2007; Flynn & Gulikers,
2001; Selvi, 2010). Teacher education programs must prepare preservice teachers
to successfully balance their desire to challenge the monolingual bias with the need
to accommodate the status quo.
One framework that offers insights into how teacher educators may develop
more linguistically responsive classrooms while also balancing the realities of
dominant language ideologies is translingualism. Developed in rhetoric and composition studies, translingualism attempts to balance socialization into linguistic
normativity with validation of students’ home language practices. A translingual
orientation challenges monoglossic framing of languages as “(1) stable and (2)
discrete from one another; (3) internally uniform; and . . . (4) each [having] its
specific, fixed, and appropriate sphere of influence” (Horner, 2011, p. 58). Advocates
of translingualism argue that language diversity should not be seen as a barrier, but
rather as a resource that can facilitate more effective communication. As Horner,
Lu, Royster, and Trimbur (2011) argue:
When faced with difference in language, this approach asks: What might this difference
do? How might it function expressively, rhetorically, communicatively? For whom, under
what conditions, and how? The possibility of writer error is reserved as an interpretation
of last resort. (pp. 303–304)
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Nonetheless, adopting a translingual orientation does not entail the acceptance
of a free-for-all where people can simply do and say whatever they want. Instead,
it emphasizes the negotiated nature of all communicative interactions and shifts
language learning away from treating language as an object that students must
acquire by following correct rules of grammar, and toward treating language as a
malleable tool that students can appropriate to develop unique rhetorical styles.
Canagarajah (2013) offers a glimpse into how this approach might be applied
in a teacher education context. Specifically, he describes a course on teaching
second-language writing where he introduced a translingual orientation to students
and provided them with the opportunity to develop literacy autobiographies. He
identifies four translingual macrostrategies that were used by his students when
writing these literacy autobiographies: (1) envoicing, (2) recontextualization, (3)
interactional strategies, and (4) entextualization. He describes how all four of these
macrostrategies offered his students opportunities to negotiate meaning in ways
that challenged dominant language ideologies. In particular, these projects allowed
writers to balance their desire to deviate from monoglossic framings of language
with their need to be understood by their audience. Therefore, these translingual
macrostrategies offer a way to begin challenging the monolingual bias while also
confronting the realities of the dominant language ideologies that continue to
permeate society. It is this balance between accommodation and resistance that
lies at the core of translingualism that we believe to be a productive starting point
for empowering nonnative English–speaking preservice teachers pursuing degrees
in TESOL.
The Course
The course, entitled “Introduction to Sociolinguistics in Education,” is required
for all TESOL students at our university. In the spring of 2014, Nelson was the
professor and Geeta the teaching assistant for two sections of the course with a total
of 36 students. Of these students, 29 would traditionally be considered nonnative
English speakers, with 28 of these being international students from China. The
remaining 7 students would traditionally be considered native English speakers and
were born and raised in the United States, though all but one of them considered
themselves proficient in at least one language in addition to English. Most of the
students had little to no prior teaching experience.
The course pedagogy was informed by the sociocultural turn in teacher education that conceptualizes learning as “negotiated with people in what they do,
through their experiences in the social practices, not just accumulated information,”
and the processes of learning as “negotiated with people in what they do, through
experiences in the social practices associated with particular activities” (Johnson,
2006, p. 237). Taking this stance as our starting point, we constructed the course
syllabus so that it was not just providing students with information about the
multilingual turn in applied linguistics, but also was allowing them to experience
the multilingual turn through both our pedagogical approach and the various assignments they were expected to complete throughout the semester. In particular,
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the course was constructed so that the students would have ample opportunities
to reflect on the ways their lived experiences had shaped their pedagogical stance
related to language education (Cross, 2010), and to develop new narratives about
their lived experience that would allow them to construct transformative pedagogical approaches that would be empowering both to them and their students
(Johnson & Golombek, 2011).
With this sociocultural perspective in mind, the course syllabus was divided
into three major, overlapping strands, each with a culminating project. The first
strand focused on introducing students to what it means to think like a sociolinguist. Students were introduced to the concept of language socialization (Heath,
1982) and the complex and often fraught language socialization processes that
second language learners experience (Morita, 2004). They were also introduced
to the concept of nation-state/colonial governmentality (Flores, 2013) as a way of
historicizing the rise of monoglossic language ideologies, as well as communicative
repertoires (Rymes, 2014) as a conceptual approach to the framing of language
use that is not confined by these monoglossic language ideologies. Students were
supported in constructing their own understandings of these concepts as they
developed and implemented research studies at formal and informal teaching
sites both on and off campus. The second strand of the course focused on applying sociolinguistic principles to their teaching. Students were introduced to
scholars who sought to apply sociolinguistic principles to teaching (Alim, 2007)
and were supported in constructing their own understanding of this pedagogical
approach as they developed lesson plans implementing some of these principles
for a community context of their choosing. The goal was for students to begin to
imagine themselves as teachers who were applying sociolinguistic principles in
their teaching.
The knowledge that students were constructing in these two strands was
shaped by a third strand that explicitly focused on translingualism. This included
reading an author who engaged in translingual writing (Anzaldúa, 1987), as well
as an academic engagement with translingual rhetorical strategies (Canagarajah,
2013). This strand culminated in each student developing a translingual project
that engaged with these translingual rhetorical strategies. This project was completed in three drafts. Students’ first draft of their project was accompanied by a
reflection that described how they used translingual rhetorical strategies to create
their project. They shared this draft and reflection with a randomly assigned peer
and exchanged feedback. They then completed a second draft of their project,
along with a reflection on whether and how they had revised their project based
on their peer’s feedback. They shared this second draft with one of us and we gave
them feedback. Finally, they developed a final project, along with a reflection on
whether and how they had revised their project based on our feedback. This third
strand will be the focus of this article, with evidence from the first and second
strands offered when appropriate to illustrate the ways that adopting a translingual
orientation changed the pedagogical stance of the preservice teachers in the course.
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Methods
This study is a naturalistic examination of classroom negotiation of literacy
(Canagarajah, 2013). The major objectives of the study were twofold: (1) to document how students enacted and negotiated translingual literacy practices with
one another and with the professor and teaching assistant, and (2) to document
how students took up a translingual orientation in their other course projects and
field placements. Thus, the data for this study were collected in two phases. The
first phase occurred in spring 2014 during the implementation of the course. The
second phase occurred in fall 2014 and spring 2015, when students conducted
their supervised teaching.
For the first phase of data collection, all 36 students consented to having their
projects studied as part of our data analysis, including their three drafts and reflections as described above, as well as recordings of their meetings with their peers
and with the professor or teaching assistant, and their other course projects. We
adopted a hybrid inductive and deductive coding approach to theme development
(Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). We began with our deductive coding scheme,
which included coding the projects and recordings for explicit discussion of key
concepts from the course. We then went back through the projects and recordings, and developed inductive codes that were derived from the data itself. These
inductive codes served as a way of keeping ourselves attuned to the sense-making
of the students in ways that were not exclusively focused on the course content.
The second phase of the study occurred in fall 2014 and spring 2015 as students engaged in their supervised teaching. For this second phase, 10 students—
9 international students and 1 domestic student—consented to continue their
participation. We began this second phase by analyzing their other course projects
to see whether and how they had applied a translingual orientation to their other
work in our course. This was followed by open-ended focus groups and interviews
that were designed to explore whether and how adopting a translingual orientation affected their pedagogical approaches during their fieldwork. In the second
phase of the study, our deductive coding included all of the codes that emerged in
the first phase, to show how students’ thinking about the issues raised in the first
phase compared with their thinking about these issues once they were teaching
their own classes.
The consistent deductive coding across both phases of the study allowed us
to systematically track how students adopted a translingual orientation in the
course, as well as their efforts to adopt this orientation as they began to confront
the practical considerations of their fieldwork experience. The inductive coding
in the first phase allowed us to systematically identify crosscutting themes that
resonated with students and that we may not have originally considered. Bringing
all of these data together allows us to make strong claims about how our students
adopted and/or resisted a translingual orientation in their course work and fieldwork. A limitation of our study was that we were unable to observe the students
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in their various field sites and had to rely on their reports of what they were doing
in their classrooms. We, therefore, are not making claims about what the students
were actually doing in their classrooms, but rather about the sense-making they
were engaged in regarding the relevance of translingualism to their teaching. We
also recognize that these findings are not generalizable to other contexts. However,
our hope is that our findings offer insights to other teacher educators who are
interested in adopting a translingual orientation in their courses.
In order to provide a general sense of the themes that emerged through the
project, Table 1 provides a code frequency analysis of both phases of the study.
While space does not allow for a detailed discussion of every student, below we
explore case studies of three students who participated in all phases of the study
and who we feel illustrate well these cross-cutting themes. The discussion focuses
TABLE 1. Code Frequency in Phase 1 and Phase 2
Code
Phase 1
N = 108
Phase 2
N = 10
NEGOTIATION
84
10
IDENTITY
55
2
WESTERN EXPECTATION
44
0
ERRORS
28
2
COMMUNICATIVE REPERTOIRES
27
9
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES
27
3
PUNCTUATION
26
1
AUTHOR’S INTENT
23
4
CULTURAL EXPRESSION
16
2
TEACHING
13
10
LANGUAGE OWNERSHIP
9
2
LANGUAGE MIXING
9
1
MULTIMODALITY
7
0
GENRE CONVENTIONS
4
0
TONE
4
0
NATIONALITY
3
2
WORD CHOICE
3
1
LIMITATIONS OF TRANSLINGUALISM
3
7
Note. Values for Phase 1 represent the number of student projects that were coded with each code. With 36 students
and 3 different iterations of the project, the highest number possible is 108. Values for Phase 2 represent the number
of students (out of 10) who mentioned each topic during our conversations with them.
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on prominent themes within their piece and their choice and justification for
genre. We also focus on the ways that they applied the knowledge they gained
from the translingual project to their other course projects as well as in their
fieldwork. These case studies illustrate the general tension that all students who
participated in the project expressed. On the one hand, all three of these students
found adopting a translingual orientation empowering in making sense of their
own lived experience as nonnative English speakers pursuing degrees in TESOL.
On the other hand, all three of these students also struggled with extrapolating
the practical implications of a translingual orientation when confronted with the
daily realities of their own classrooms.
Translingualism in Action
Though each of the translingual projects students developed was different and all
of the negotiations that students engaged in with one another and us were unique,
certain themes quickly became apparent through our data analysis. Specifically, all
of the students blended aspects of their communicative repertoires in ways that
they had never been able to do before in an academic context. Many of the students
engaged in these translingual practices as part of personal narratives that explicitly
explored the relationship between language and identity. A few of the students
decided to engage in fictionalized storytelling. A common theme through all of
the projects was the disjuncture between the static nature of dominant linguistic
categories, such as native and nonnative speakers, and the complex linguistic
realities that defined their lived experience. These projects offered students the
space to construct new ways of understanding language that resisted dominant,
static categorizations. Yet, while students overwhelmingly supported adopting a
translingual orientation, they struggled with the implications of adopting this
orientation as nonnative English–speaking teaching professionals.
Case 1: “Why Needs Hiding?”
Our first case study focuses on Candace.2 In her autobiographical project, Candace
explored the relationship among language, power, and identity, and described how
the rising social status that came with her increasing English language proficiency
also led her to internalize the superiority of English over Mandarin and local
dialects.3 Here, she reflects on the impact of this internalization on her identity
development:
However, what I also want to show is the contradictory nature of the language power.
For one hand, this power of language positively motivates me to learn more standard
languages through mimicking and repeating. One the other hand, this power of language
rapes me of the chances to speak dialects and so-called stigmatized languages. This
power of language puts me in a dilemma where I am losing myself and my identity in
order to fully take advantage of the language power. I try to use my voices to argue that
we are actually somehow controlled by this power of language. (Candace, Reflection 1)
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In the conclusion of her translingual piece, Candace writes that as a bilingual person
who straddles multiple, seemingly discrete languages and identities, she should
make an effort to break out of the dichotomy of “us” versus “them” by embracing her multiple identities rather than “hiding” her own and “mimicking” others.
She extends this personal insight toward an understanding of the relationship
of language and power in the broader society and envisions a world of linguistic
egalitarianism, wondering, “Why not be tolerant to Mandarin in Hong Kong? Why
not view everyone as a valued self with their valued language?” (Candace, Draft 1).
Candace negotiates the complexities of language, power, and identity not only
in her explicit message, but also through her use of translingual writing strategies.
For example, she chooses to literally translate some phrases—for example, “to be
‘洋气’ (Foreign air)? Or to be ‘土鳖’ (country turtle)”—in order to retain the feel
of the Mandarin original while still presenting it in a way that remains accessible to
readers who may not understand Mandarin. By strategically using her knowledge
of English and Mandarin, Candace is able to construct a translingual subjectivity
that not only illustrates her bilingual proficiencies but also accommodates readers
in a US context who are unable to read Mandarin.
In addition to literal translation, Candace sometimes chooses semantic translations as she uses idioms in Shanghainese and Mandarin in different contexts
to explore their social implications. For instance, when reflecting on her use of
Shanghainese, she writes:
I also remember how I was more popular among my Shanghainese students when I used
specific Shanghai prefix “是伐啦? (right?)” in the classroom teaching. (Candace, Draft 1)
Here, a semantic translation (“right?”) functions as an interactional strategy to
facilitate the reader’s understanding of the utterance in context.
Later, as she reflects on the feeling of mimicking others’ languages and losing
her own, she writes:
On the road of empowering myself with standard and highly valued language, I am
somehow 东施效颦 (A monster who mimics Snow Princess’ smile but ends as a failure).
However, the fact is that, when we keep mimicking and mimicking others’ languages, I
lost our own languages. (Candace, Draft 1)
In her first reflection, she writes that she chooses to use Mandarin here as a way to
“attack the behavior of over-mimicking of the standard English or those highlyreputed languages such as Shanghai dialects.” By actively using Mandarin, she is
resisting a societal preference for English and Shanghainese, two languages that
she perceives as being in positions of legitimacy and power in the first half of her
translingual piece. Furthermore, she chooses to translate semantically for readers
who are unable to read Mandarin or are unfamiliar with the background of this
phrase.
Candace blends multiple semiotic resources, including different languages, text
colors and styles, formatting strategies, and images throughout her translingual
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writing piece. In doing so, she resists monoglossic language ideologies and instead
embraces her use of multiple languages as expressions of her identity:
I use different language and dialects to convey my inner voices. One message I try to
convey is that language should be a weapon and power to state out our identity and
voice; however, language shouldn’t be the weapon to disdain other languages in order
to empower their own ones. . . . I strongly attack the idea of distinguishing languages
via nationalities, economic development and geography. (Candace, Reflection 1)
She also resists the power dynamic inherent to a classroom context—that of a
professor over students. In an individual interview, Nelson asked her about a line
toward the end of her piece that used unconventional English grammar:
Language is a power? Why needs hiding, why needs mimicking? Why not value the
country turtle? (Candace, Draft 2)
In her final reflection, written after this interview, Candace explains why she chose
to retain this unconventional structure despite Flores’s question:
I used the Chinese mind to write and in our languages we don’t use “do” in the questions.
Here, because the topic is related with whether I control the language or am controlled by
the language, I want to show the tension between myself and my language. Furthermore,
I want to show the agency of myself and I am kind of in the middle of two languages.
Because of these two reasons, I choose to retain this Chinglish version of the language
to show my identity as a multilingual and an English language learner who wants to
preserve her Chinese identity. (Candace, Reflection 3)
While “Chinglish” is often used in pejorative ways (Lu, 2004), here Candace is reclaiming this term in order to describe and validate her experiences as a bilingual
user of both English and Chinese. In this way, an utterance that might traditionally
be considered ungrammatical English caused by negative interference from Chinese
is reframed as an entextualization strategy meant to elicit a particular reaction from
the reader. Rather than becoming a marker of deficiency or incomplete acquisition,
this “Chinglish” utterance instead is a strategy employed by an agentive language
user in order to position herself as a multilingual who is not simply “mimicking”
the English language practices socially constructed as grammatical, powerful, or
legitimate, but who is instead reconstructing English in ways that allow her to
reflect her Chinese identity.
During the course of the semester, Candace began to apply the insights she
gained from the translingual project to a sociolinguistic research project in her
fieldwork placement at a local nonprofit adult ESL literacy class. All of her students
were African immigrants who spoke multiple languages but had little experience
with formal schooling. In her analysis of the classroom’s interactions, she identified a failed attempt at adopting a translingual orientation, in which she instructed
students to write down a translation of a word in their L1. When Candace asked
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one student to translate a word another student replied, “How could he do that?
We never went to school!” Yet, rather than abandon a translingual orientation,
Candace used her analysis of the students’ fluid language practices during their
oral interactions with one another to adapt a translingual orientation to this particular context. Together with two of her classmates, Candace devised a strategy
that they termed translingual audio-diaries as part of their sociolinguistics in
education project; this strategy offered students the opportunity to use their entire
communicative repertoire to create audio-recordings describing their previous
experiences with linguistic discrimination.
In the following term, Candace further refined these translingual audio-diaries.
She had her students make recordings of themselves speaking in a language of
their choice and then working first to transliterate their speech into the Roman
alphabet and next to translate it into English. While her students were primarily interested in learning Standardized American English and would likely have
reacted negatively to her deliberately encouraging “ungrammatical” use (such
as “why needs hiding?”), Candace was able to make them see how their home
languages could provide a valuable foundation for their development of English
literacy. By isolating orthographic concerns (e.g., learning letter-sound pairings,
forming letters on a page), students were able to focus on discrete skills without
getting distracted or overwhelmed by English features (e.g., meaning, vocabulary,
unfamiliar phonemes, etc.) not directly related to orthography. As a result, students
were able to develop confidence in using the Roman alphabet by using their home
language as a bridge to English literacy.
In summary, Candace used the translingual project as an opportunity to explore the tensions that she experienced as a bilingual user of Chinese and English.
In order to express these tensions, Candace relied on a number of translingual
rhetorical strategies that included conscious deviations from what her professor
indicated as conventional grammatical structures. In her teaching, both during that
semester and the subsequent semester, Candace was able to use the insights she
had gained from adopting a translingual orientation to help her students draw on
their home language practices to facilitate their literacy skills and English language
development. This is a strategy that Candace claimed she would not have considered
if she hadn’t been given the opportunity to explore her own translingual identity
and its relevance to language teaching.
Case 2: “Where Are You from EXACTLY?”
Our second case study focuses on Joy. Joy’s project, like Candace’s, was autobiographical in the sense that she used it to reflect on her own language use. Specifically,
Joy considers the manner in which languages, nativeness, and linguistic ownership
are often tied to specific geographic areas:
My project begins with a question many people ask me “where are you from EXACTLY?”
when they find me speaking different dialects and ends with my answer to the question
“what language I speak does not equal where I come from”. I position myself as being
a legitimate user of three dialects and do not associate one language with one specific
city. (Joy, Draft 1)
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Joy resists the idea that any one of her languages is more “authentic” than the others, or that she is in some way less qualified or entitled to communicate in some of
these languages. In her first reflection, she writes, “I see all the dialects as my own
languages.” She builds on this stance to complicate the meaning of the question,
where are you from?, since people who ask this question are often, in fact, inquiring
about other details, as she explains in her interview with Nelson:
The question “where are you from” can mean different things. If people say, “where were
you born,” it’s a way to say that. If people think “where are you from” means “where did
you grow up,” if people mean “where did you spend most of your time” or “where are
you studying” or “where are you working,” it can mean different things, but if people
want to know where are you from just because the language you speak, I don’t think
that makes sense, so that’s the main idea I want to convey in this project. (Joy, Interview)
Joy was the only student who used a non-text-based medium for her project, instead
producing an audio-visual presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. She chose this
medium primarily because some of the dialects she speaks do not have a written
form, and she could use PowerPoint’s multimedia format to present recordings
of the languages to her audience.
Capitalizing on this multimodality, two of her slides are particularly salient.
The first (Figure 1) features her use of digitally altered screenshots of three simultaneously occurring Facebook events, one for each focal language:
She justifies this decision in her first reflection:
FIGURE 1. Joy’s Facebook events
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People may think only those who can speak the dialect of a region should attend the
gathering and one person belongs to one city. By saying that I plan to going to Chongqingese gathering, Shanghaiese gathering and Ningboese gathering, I am opposing
monolingualism. (Joy, Reflection 1)
It is also important to note that in the original project Joy also relied on the interactional strategy of using a designated color for each language (blue for Chongqingese, yellow for Shanghainese, and red for Ningboese), which she maintains
throughout her translingual project.
To reinforce the overlap of her languages and identities, she includes the slide
shown in Figure 2.
Here, she visually represents the manner in which her languages interact among
locations, social and academic contexts, and interlocutors, through the use of
overlapping circles whose coloring corresponds to each language. In a subsequent
conversation, she explains that she gave each language and city a designated color
because “this is how people see my languages.” However, she goes on to explain
that this slide was intended to display the languages’ interaction:
In this slide, I show that my languages interact—the colors are mixed. I made this intentionally to show how my languages interact with each other. They cannot be separated.
And I wanted to move towards a hybrid and complex mixture of languages so you see
the combination of sounds and languages I speak. (Joy, Interview)
In this way, Joy is able to juxtapose the static nature of dominant linguistic categories with the dynamic nature of her lived experience.
FIGURE 2. Joy’s overlapping circles
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Like Candace, Joy sought to adopt a translingual orientation in both her other
course assignments and her fieldwork placement. She conducted her sociolinguistic
research project in her fieldwork placement. Here she used a translingual orientation to critique the power relations that emerged between a nonnative English–
speaking teacher and a native English–speaking teaching assistant. She also used a
translingual orientation to provide a counter-narrative that highlighted the many
skills of nonnative English speakers. Along with two of her classmates, she also
applied a translingual orientation to her sociolinguistics in education project. The
group developed a project in which students at a university ESL program would
have the opportunity to develop translingual advertisements to highlight tourist
attractions in their country of origin. They noted that the goal of this project was
“to inform students that their multicultural background and multilingual resources
. . . can be their extra resources to draw on in their academic study.”
Joy continued to attempt to apply a translingual orientation to her teaching
in the year following the course, as she student-taught in two different settings.
The first was a Mandarin class where the majority of her students were adolescents whose parents were first-generation immigrants from China and who spoke
Cantonese, Mandarin, Fuxinese, or some combination thereof in addition to
English. In this setting, perhaps because students often felt themselves in between
American and Chinese cultures, Joy found translingual strategies useful for engaging students’ interest and encouraging them to produce new kinds of language
and cultural artifacts representative of their Chinese American experience. For
example, students in her class read a story about a very smart boy named 司马光
who used a sharp rock to break a water tank in which his friend was drowning.
As a follow-up activity, instead of having students recite the text (as she confessed
she might have done before being exposed to a translingual approach), she had
students create their own versions of the story using a set of Mandarin structures
that she provided and supplementing them with English as needed. Then, students
worked together to translate their stories to produce a final product that was in
Mandarin. In reflecting on this project, Joy said:
In one of the groups’ students, he becomes an old granny. In another, he becomes a
snake. But if I told them to use Mandarin only, they never would have come up with
these stories because I haven’t taught them the words for it. . . . My language class is
more interactive and my students are more motivated. Most of them are forced by their
parents to come to Sunday Chinese school. (Joy, Interview)
Because students were developing understandings of themselves as translingual
and transnational individuals, it was significant and beneficial for them to engage
with language in ways that reflected these identities and their formation.
While these strategies were successful in this context, Joy noted that her adolescent Chinese-heritage students were already highly proficient in English, a language of power and wider communication in the Philadelphia area. She wondered
whether such strategies would be as successful in her second teaching context, a
nonprofit adult ESL class focused primarily on what she called “survival English.”
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In this second setting, students were interested in practical daily and vocational uses
for language, including filling out job applications, going to the doctor, purchasing
groceries, and so on. For many students, the twice-weekly class that she taught was
the only English instruction, and in some cases the only English communication,
that they experienced. As a result, students preferred to receive as much English
exposure as possible in that time. A commitment to a translingual orientation
was further complicated by the explicit English Only policy of the nonprofit itself.
Like Candace, Joy used the translingual project as an opportunity to explore
the relationship between her languages and her identity. In particular, she was able
to use this project as an opportunity to speak back to the dominant narrative that
connects particular languages with particular places and to illustrate the ways the
complexities of her lived experience challenge this dominant notion. She was able to
use the insights she gained from this project to develop a new approach to working
with heritage learners of Chinese, seeking to build on their bilingual identities by
providing them with translingual spaces where they could use their entire communicative repertoire as part of their sense-making in the class. However, she did
not feel that such an approach would be appropriate in her work at a nonprofit
adult ESL class with a strict English Only policy. This begs the question of how
we can support students in adopting a translingual orientation in contexts with
strict English Only policies—a question that is also explored in the next case study.
Case 3: “People MOUNTAIN People SEA”
Our final case study focuses on Yolanda. In contrast with both Candace and Joy, who
presented explicitly reflective pieces, Yolanda chose to develop a diary describing
a recent trip she had taken to Orlando, Florida. She primarily used English and
Mandarin, along with strong visual cues, to describe her experiences and reactions. In her first reflection, she justifies her choice of genre primarily through the
importance of building a relationship with her readers:
I hoped to create a relaxing and burden-free readership with my potential reviewers. A
mini-diary is much less academic and serious than autobiography. Also, diary could be
easier to manipulate if I wanted to insert some interactional and emotional sentences to
make it more intimate to readers . . . maybe even enabling them to recollect their sweet
memories of travelling before. . . . I tried to establish a co-membership with my potential
readers since everyone must have traveled to somewhere before. (Yolanda, Reflection 1)
Yolanda emphasizes the significance of creating a “relaxing,” “intimate,” “burdenfree” experience for her readers and observes that a diary or autobiographical
genre can ease this process. In her translingual project, she adhered to this genre
by using recontextualization strategies like writing in the first person and dividing
the entries into days.
Through the majority of her piece, Yolanda used either Mandarin characters
or conventional English (in addition to other semiotic resources such as pictures,
capitalization, text size, and so on). However, at times, she chose to blend these
languages creatively to capture aspects of her experience in ways that could not
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be conveyed through just one language or the other. One such case was her use
of the phrase “people mountain people sea,” which is a direct translation from a
Mandarin idiom that roughly translates as “very crowded”.
In her first reflection, Yolanda writes that in this phrase, she strategically uses
Mandarin and English elements of her communicative repertoire to vividly illustrate how crowded the parks were while also incorporating an element of humor
and identification with her Chinese background. In her second reflection, she
explains that after receiving feedback from her peer partner, she added the clip-art
images of people (see Figure 3) as an interactional strategy to help readers who
were unfamiliar with 人 (Mandarin: “person”) or the idiom “people mountain
people sea” understand the intended meaning. Interestingly, she also notes that
she only used this interactional strategy for the first two occurrences of the phrase:
I did not add the pictures to every “people mountain people sea” in the rest of the text
partially because I want my readers could be socialized into my way of translingual
writing. I hope they could frame the meaning of “crowdedness” whenever they came
across this code-meshing phrase in the text. (Yolanda, Reflection 2)
In this way, she provided a level of support to readers who do not understand
Mandarin, while still expecting them to make an effort to familiarize themselves
with her ways of communicating.
Yolanda also had to decide whether to make changes based on the professor’s
feedback. For instance, she decided to change her first sentence from “in the past
spring break” in her second draft to “during the past spring break” in her third
draft:
I changed the preposition “in” to “during”. Prof. Nelson said that “in the past spring
break” was not conventional. I did not want my readers to struggle with the first sentence
because of the unconventional language use, therefore, I immediately modified it into
“during the past spring break”. (Yolanda, Reflection 3)
FIGURE 3. Yolanda includes clip-art images of people
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In this case, Yolanda chose to use what the professor suggested as conventional English in order to facilitate her readers’ understanding of the first sentence. However,
when the professor questioned her later decision to describe the price of a buffet
on her first night in Orlando as “friendly,” she chose not to revise this wording:
I did take his feedback into consideration before I wrote my 3rd draft. The reason I didn’t
change my third draft is . . . resistance to revise, and also that errors are subjective. As
long as I can justify my decisions, then why should I change it? It’s my linguistic identity
of a bilingual user of both Chinese and English. (Yolanda, Reflection 3)
Yolanda here asserts herself as a legitimate user of both English and Mandarin,
and emphasizes that authorial intent can take precedence over conventional, often
monolingual language use. This stance differs markedly from a traditional model
of academic writing in which the writer is expected to communicate clearly and
unambiguously while the reader, the professor in this case, should invest minimal
effort in decoding students’ writing.
Yolanda applied the insights that she gained from her translingual project
to other course assignments. For their culminating sociolinguistics in education
project, her group encouraged students to use translingual strategies to develop
presentations about their countries of origin. In the reflection that they included
with their project they wrote that their hope was that adopting a translingual orientation would help both the presenters and the audience to “engage in the negotiation
and co-construction of meaning, building up a new recognition of language as
flexible and semiotic elements rather than as composites of rules.” In her sociolinguistics research project, Yolanda examined the ways that a Mandarin teacher
engaged in translanguaging with her students in order to enhance their language
learning and develop a more egalitarian relationship. Both projects demonstrated
Yolanda’s growing awareness of the implications of a translingual orientation that
she developed through engaging in translingual projects of her own.
In the semester following the course, Yolanda continued to develop her translingual orientation to teaching in a community-based adult ESL program. Most of
her students were highly educated in their home countries, and many were only
intending to be in the United States for a short time. While her institution explicitly
prohibited languages other than English in the classroom, when reflecting on her
teaching philosophy and practices, Yolanda observed that the translingual orientation she had learned about in the sociolinguistics class had affected her perception
of her students and their language use. She noted that after the translingual writing
project, she was less impulsive in “correcting” what she perceived to be students’
“errors” and instead sought to understand why they were using language in the
way that they were. In an interview, she provided the example of “I very often go
grocery shopping on weekends,” which she argued would more conventionally be
said, “I go grocery shopping on weekends very often”:
When I was teaching time prepositions on, in, and at, one student said, “I very often go
grocery shopping on weekends.” Well, that student is also Chinese, and the transliteration
of Chinese is exactly this word order. So it helped me rethink the role of the students’ L1
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in the classroom. I did that in my project too, like saying, “the price is so friendly” and it
was intentional. And this would be helpful even if I don’t share students’ L1. Thinking
about the cause of an error is important, is it intentional or is it L1 or is it something
else? (Yolanda, Interview)
Whether one word order is indeed more conventional than the other is less relevant
in this context than Yolanda’s attempt to treat this discrepancy as an opportunity to
become more familiar with students and their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Her focus shifted from understandings of “correct” and “incorrect” to intentionality and attempting to understand the social implications and consequences of her
students’ linguistic choices. This shift in Yolanda’s approach to students’ language
use was all the more significant because the institutional constraints of her teaching
setting did not facilitate the use of languages other than English in the classroom.
As Yolanda described it:
The institution does not allow us to use languages other than English, so my class is really an English Only class. If we hear someone using another language, we are supposed
to direct them back to English use. (Yolanda, Interview)
Like Joy, she also observed that students themselves may be opposed to using their
home languages in class, primarily because of limited opportunities to communicate in English outside of the classroom:
A second issue is they come for two hours once a week. Some students will say, “No. I
come here for two hours a week to learn English. Why do you ask me to do something
other than English?” This may depend on students and institution. (Yolanda, Interview)
While Yolanda could not overtly draw on her students’ home languages or backgrounds as resources in the classroom, she still felt that adopting a translingual
orientation changed how she related to her students and, in particular, how she
approached “error correction” in her classroom—unconventional structures were no
longer categorically “wrong” but rather provided valuable insights into her students’
experiences. Thus, a translingual approach can still benefit teacher-candidates and
their students in the classroom, even in explicitly English Only settings.
As in the first two case studies, Yolanda also used the translingual project as
an opportunity to experiment with language in ways that expressed her bilingual
identity. Unlike Candace and Joy, Yolanda did not do a traditional autobiographical
piece, but instead decided to focus on recounting a story about a trip to Orlando,
Florida. Despite this, she was still able to explore the relationship between language and identity, seeking to embrace the constant interplay between Chinese
and English that shaped her daily life. She also felt empowered to disagree with
the professor and insist that he accommodate her rhetorical style and not expect
her to do all of the work. In the next semester, she tried to reproduce this dynamic
with her own students by resisting the role of an all-knowing expert and seeking
to approach “errors” as opportunities for negotiation with her students. The fact
that she was able to do this in a context with a strict English Only policy indicates
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that even in contexts where translanguaging is not permitted, a translingual lens
can profoundly affect teachers’ teaching philosophy and classroom practices.
(Re)Orienting TESOL Teacher Education
Currently there is a strong disjunction between the multilingual turn in applied
linguistics and the pedagogical practices that are present in TESOL teacher education programs. At the theoretical level, applied linguists have called into question
the monolingual bias that has permeated the field since its inception in the 1960s
and have challenged the privileging of native speakers as ultimate authorities on
the language. Though these theoretical contributions have begun to make their
way into the course work of TESOL teacher education programs, the pedagogical practices of many of these programs remain unchanged. One consequence
of this is the continued marginalization of the increasing numbers of nonnative
English–speaking teachers who are entering these programs.
In this article, we have made a case for translingualism as an overarching
conceptual framework that provides insights into how the pedagogical practices
of TESOL teacher education programs can be reshaped in ways that align with
the multilingual turn. A translingual orientation shifts the conversation from
identifying and correcting “errors” toward negotiating meaning across difference.
In a context of essays, exams, and grades, adopting such an orientation is easier
said than done. In a context where nonnative English speakers will inevitably
confront hiring discrimination and cannot necessarily afford to reject conventional grammatical structures, adopting such an orientation may seem daunting
if not impossible. Yet, our experience with the translingual projects described in
this article indicates that providing even a small space for this orientation in our
TESOL teacher education programs can go a long way. The translingual projects
offered students an opportunity to analyze the world and themselves in a different
way. This new view of the world significantly changed how they approached their
subsequent fieldwork experiences, even in contexts where the use of languages
other than English was strictly forbidden.
Our TESOL teacher education programs are becoming increasingly linguistically diverse. This linguistic diversity includes multiple languages alongside multiple
language varieties, such as World Englishes. How would TESOL teacher education
look if we provided spaces for students to develop projects that explore this linguistic diversity through a translingual lens? How might this help these programs
more effectively prepare students—regardless of their language backgrounds—to
become agents of change in challenging monoglossic language ideologies? The
linguistic diversity is already there. Why needs hiding?
NOTES
1. While we acknowledge the ideological roots and empirical ambiguities associated with dichotomized notions of nativeness and nonnativeness, throughout this paper we use these terms because
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the majority of the students identified themselves explicitly as NNESTs, and this positionality
affected their self-perceptions, their writing projects, and their teaching.
2. Pseudonyms are used for all research participants.
3. All three of our participants refer to local varieties spoken in their community as dialects. Though
these language varieties are not all mutually intelligible with Mandarin, we have decided to use
the terminology preferred by the participants.
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Nelson Flores is an assistant professor of educational linguistics at the University of
Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. His research seeks to denaturalize
raciolinguistic ideologies that inform current conceptualizations of language education. Geeta Aneja earned her doctorate in educational linguistics at the University of
Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Her research explores post-structuralist
approaches to the native-nonnative dichotomy, how native speakerist ideologies are
recreated in various contexts in applied linguistics and TESOL, and the material
effects of such ideologies on practitioners, researchers, and students.
Initial submission: November 16, 2015
Final revision submitted: May 11, 2016
Accepted: June 1, 2016