Beyond English-only pedagogy: Translanguaging, learner agency, and meaning-making in Malaysian secondary English classrooms

This study explores the use of translanguaging to support learner agency and meaning-making in Malaysian secondary English as a Second Language (ESL) contexts. The study adopts García and Li Wei's translanguaging approach, situated within Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. It addresses the relative lack of empirical attention to observed classroom practice at the secondary level. It examines how observed classroom translanguaging behaviour relates to learners' reported sense of agency and the co-construction of meaning. A combination of a quantitative survey, qualitative observation, and a semi-structured interview is proposed, with a total sample of around 200-300 Form 4 and Form 5 students, and purposive sampling of students and teachers for the latter two methods. Quantitative analysis will use descriptive statistics, reliability testing, correlation, hierarchical multiple regression, and subgroup comparisons, while qualitative data will be analysed using reflexive thematic analysis guided by the four affordances of translanguaging (cognitive-conceptual, planning-organisational, affective-social, and linguistic-discursive). Results from illustrative analyses of simulated data suggest moderate positive correlations between translanguaging practices and learner agency, and indicate that translanguaging could be a strong predictor of agency after controlling for contextual variables. The proposed integrated analysis extends the concept of translanguaging as a multifunctional process that learners engage in to make sense of things, maintain participation, and assert their authority in the learning process. The study thus adds to the body of translanguaging studies by examining translanguaging in the classroom, translanguaging and learner agency, and translanguaging and meaning-making in Malaysia's multilingual, examination-oriented educational context, while drawing implications for the development of more principled and inclusive translanguaging ESL pedagogy and language policy.