Translanguaging-to-learn: Evidence from a L2 Chinese classroom

This study looked into the naturally-occurred translanguaging behaviors gleaned from video recordings of an introductory L2 Chinese class both quantitatively and qualitatively. The participants included 41 college-level learners of Chinese who engaged in communicative tasks and were encouraged to use both their shared dominant language and second languages (L2). Audio recordings of around 400 min of interactions between peers during collaborative tasks were transcribed. Qualitative analysis of the data was based on the framework of Conversation Analysis (Sacks et al., 1974), while particular attention was paid to learners’ turn-taking, repair, translanguaging instances, and their chunk disassemble and assemble behaviors in output. Two bottom-up coding schemes built upon existing analytical frameworks (Swain, 1985, 1998; Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980) were used to analyze the learners’ translanguaging behaviors quantitatively. The data revealed that learners did not translanguage randomly. Instead, there was abundant evidence linking translanguaging to cognitive processes that might facilitate syntactic processing. Notably, Chinese, a non-inflected language heavily reliant on word order, provided a clear lens for observing how learners analyze and reassemble chunks through multilingual practices. Linking linguistic research to classroom practice, the study moved beyond endorsing translanguaging in language classrooms, and toward more function-specific claims grounded in evidence.