8.2 Activities for Translanguaging Pedagogies
Emma Trentman
Exercise 1: Teacher Talk
This section presents two excerpts of teacher talk from a first semester Arabic class for analysis [1]. As you read the transcripts, think about how your evaluation of these excerpts would be different from a monolingual perspective versus a translingual perspective. In a monolingual perspective, the emphasis is on which language is being used, with a higher value placed on the target language in order to create monolingual immersion. In a translingual perspective, the focus is on how the teacher is drawing from her linguistic repertoire and the strategic decisions she is making with regards to language choice in order to support learning Arabic. Monolingual perspectives also prioritize standard language, while translingual perspectives look at the role of variation. Ask yourself if you see similar patterns in your own teacher talk. Why or why not? Would approaching teacher talk from a translingual perspective change any of your own practices?
Excerpt 1. My computer
In the excerpt below, the teacher had just explained how to add possessive pronouns to the end of nouns in Arabic.
- We can do this for anything
- Kombyuterii? laa kombyuteruha (gestures at student), oh laa laa laa kombyuteruhu (gestures at another student) [My computer? No, her computer, oh, no, no, no, his computer]
- Kombyuterik? (points at a student) oh wallahi? kombyuterik alHamdullilah okay [Your computer? Oh really? Your computer, thank God, okay]
Excerpt 2. Family
In this excerpt, the class had completed an activity where they practiced connecting letters in Arabic (an important part of learning the script) and the teacher was reviewing the answers. The student who asks the question was of Iraqi heritage. Arabic is a diglossic language, with fuSHaa, or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the high variety and regional dialects as the lower varieties.
T: Okay ya shabaab [youth], how many people saw this [writes the letter ئ on board] and had a heart attack?
S: Oh me, that’s why I asked
T: The very first word, here we go, this guy, so yeah, ʕaaʔila [family], that’s the very first word ya shabaab [youth], ʕaaʔila [family] (writes it on board).
T: Don’t forget to put the hamza fouq al-kursii [glottal stop on the chair] (this is a description of a spelling convention)
T: naHnu ʕaaʔila [we are a family] (sings this line from a song they have learned)
T: and this is how you spell it (sings this line to the same tune)
S: Why is it not yaa (the name of the letter without the glottal stop), I mean it’s the one with the hamza (glottal stop)
T: Ah, haaða fuSHaa yaʕnii [this is MSA, it means] MSA
S: What?
T: MSA fuSHaa [MSA] Modern Standard Arabic yaʕnii [it means]
T: bi-shaamii, ʕiraaqii ʕayla [in Levantine, Iraqi, it’s family (dialect pronunciation)]
Reflection:
From a monolingual perspective that prioritizes an Arabic only immersion experience, we might view this teacher as using too much English, even in a first-year classroom, and distracting students by bringing in dialect pronunciations. Feedback to the teacher might include how to use less English.
From a translingual perspective, we would focus on how the teacher is strategically drawing from the overlap between her linguistic repertoire and the students, as well as resources such as pointing and song, to help the students master a specific part of the Arabic language (possessive pronouns in the first excerpt and a spelling convention in the second). In the first excerpt, she uses a cognate to emphasize the grammatical terms unfamiliar to the students (there is a more formal, non-cognate, Arabic word for computer, Haasuub). In the second excerpt, she chooses a word familiar to the students to explain the spelling convention, and links it to a song they have learned about the family. She also recognizes alternative forms of this word in dialects, including the heritage dialect of the student that asked the question. Finally, although she uses English to explain, there are also a number of Arabic words in her utterances that students are likely to be familiar with such as letter names, and the names of dialects.
Overall, the difference is a focus on how the teacher is drawing from her linguistic repertoire, rather than which language she is using.
Exercise 2. Linguistic Repertoire
Draw a picture of your own linguistic repertoire. Think about it including the following elements:
- Languages
- Dialects
- Language specific to your career, hobbies, activities, family, etc.
Next, map the specific parts of your repertoire to the people you use language with and the contexts you use language in in a given week. Do you notice any patterns?
Finally, think about your language classes. What decisions are you making about what parts of your linguistic repertoire to use when you teach? How are you evaluating your language choices, or the choices of your students? Does this evaluation reflect a monolingual or translingual perspective? Based on these exercises, are there any changes you want to make in your language use, or your perspective on your language use?
- “The data excerpts used in this exercises resulted from research supported by Qatar Foundation International.” ↵
An individual’s unique collection of linguistic resources.