From Silence to Engagement: Translanguaging as a Catalyst for Students’ Comprehension and Active Classroom Participation

This study explored how translanguaging is implemented by Senior High School teachers and how they perceive its contribution to students' comprehension, participation, meaning-making, and engagement in a multilingual Philippine classroom. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, ten teachers at Pooc National High School, Talisay City, Cebu, were selected through criterion purposive sampling. Data from validated semi-structured interviews, non-participant classroom observations, field notes, and authorized video recordings were analyzed using Colaizzi's seven-step phenomenological approach. Findings indicated that teachers strategically integrated English, Filipino, and Cebuano/Visayan through language shifting, translation, contextualized explanations, and collaborative activities. They reported clearer understanding of unfamiliar concepts, greater willingness to communicate, more confident classroom participation, and strengthened peer interaction. However, challenges included overreliance on familiar languages, difficulty translating specialized terminology, additional instructional demands, and maintaining opportunities for English development. Purposeful translanguaging therefore emerged as a perceived instructional scaffold rather than a substitute for target-language learning. The study recommends piloting and refining the developed Translanguaging-Based Instructional Exemplar, including structured multilingual support and gradual transition to English. As evidence comes from ten teachers in one school and relies primarily on qualitative accounts and observations, causal effects and wider transferability cannot be established. The study contributes a context-specific instructional resource for linguistically responsive teaching and potentially advances educational sustainability, SDG 4 (Quality Education), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) through more inclusive opportunities for classroom learning.