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Language Learning in Higher Education

Journal of the European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education (CercleS)

Editor-in-Chief: Szczuka-Dorna, Liliana / O’Rourke, Breffni

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An exploratory study of translanguaging practices in an online beginner-level foreign language classroom

Lina Adinolfi / Lluïsa Astruc
Published Online: 2017-05-09 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2017-0008

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Abstract

Translanguaging, the movement between communicative modes and features of different languages, is becoming an established research tradition in content-focused second language learning contexts. Pedagogic translanguaging practices nevertheless remain under-applied and under-researched in foreign language instructional settings, whether face-to-face or online. Synchronous virtual foreign language classrooms represent particularly rich spaces in which to begin to explore such practices, due to their multimodal affordances on the one hand and their technical constraints on the other. This study examines the pedagogic translanguaging practices that occur in a corpus of beginner-level Spanish online group tutorial data. A macro-level analysis of the interactional patterns that occur within this context reveals that both teacher participants follow closely the pedagogic prescriptions provided by the course designers with regard to the activities they employ. The finding that these activities offer limited opportunities for students to move between communicative modes and languages may be attributed in part to the emphasis on spoken interaction in this particular setting. A complementary micro-level analysis nevertheless reveals a more autonomous and intuitive approach to the teachers’ choice of language when mediating such activities. Instances of student code-switching are relatively few, however. The study concludes with a call to course designers and practitioners to experiment with integrating a wide range of pedagogic translanguaging opportunities into online foreign language classroom activities, with a view to enhancing teaching, learning and communication in such environments.

Keywords: translanguaging; code-switching; foreign language classrooms; synchronous online communication

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About the article

Lina Adinolfi

Lina Adinolfi is a lecturer in English Language Teaching in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University, UK. Her research interests encompass pedagogic translanguaging, lexical chunks in language learning and teaching, learner-driven language instruction (process syllabuses), and language-in-education policies and practices in multilingual contexts. She has extensive international experience of language teacher development and is currently involved in a British Council-Education Development Trust-funded study of English medium schooling (EMI) in low and medium income countries.

Lluïsa Astruc

Lluïsa Astruc is Lecturer in Spanish at The Open University, Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London. She has a research background in Modern Languages and Linguistics and expertise in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her doctoral research (Cambridge University, 2005) focused on the intonation of Catalan and English, and since then she has published widely on the acquisition of rhythm and intonation in different languages. Her new collaborative research project aims at taking a broader view of language and linguistics and engage deeply with the connections between language, culture, and pedagogy.

Published Online: 2017-05-09

Published in Print: 2017-05-24

Citation Information: Language Learning in Higher Education, Volume 7, Issue 1, Pages 185–204, ISSN (Online) 2191-6128, ISSN (Print) 2191-611X, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2017-0008.

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