Translanguaging to enhance reading comprehension among first-year medical students

Since the turn of the century there has been an increase in the use of translanguaging in multilingual learning contexts. Many researchers have shown how translanguaging enhances multilingual students’ ability to understand academic content. This experimental study provides empirical evidence that translanguaging can enhance reading comprehension. An experimental group and a control group were used to establish whether there was a significant difference between the performances of the two groups after reading an academic text. Using the t-test analysis, the results show a significant difference in the performance of the control group and the experimental group. These findings prompt us to conclude that translanguaging is an effective strategy that enhances reading comprehension.

Konceptuelle metaforer som selektionskriterium for Dansk litteraturs kanon - med fokus på elevers literacytilegnelse på tværs af tidsrum, sprog og kultur i arbejdet med kanonlitteratur

This article argues that an increased focus on the inherent conceptual metaphors of chronotopes in canonical literature may contribute to students’ awareness of the historical and literary development in time and space. Thus, expanding their literacy-skills acquisition in comparison to the linear chronological periodization, author-portrait and text reading that typically characterize the reading of canon literature. Furthermore, the article argues that an increased focus on bi- and multilingual students’ interpretation of conceptual metaphors may contribute to the historical and literary development.

The Translanguaging Pedagogies Continuum

Translanguaging pedagogy is an approach to educational equity that harnesses multilingual learners’ communicative repertoires (e.g., home languages, non-standard varieties, and gestures) by strategically incorporating them in the classroom to ensure students’ active participation and meaningful learning. This paper proposes a research-informed continuum that captures a range of possibilities for integrating translanguaging in language and literacy instruction. This continuum provides insight into how educators may make socially just instructional and curricular decisions that are based on recognizing multilingual students' languages, cultures, and ways of knowing as valuable assets in the classroom.

Examining Fatigue for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing Through Universal Design for Learning

In current educational contexts, Deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) students are being educated in inclusive classrooms. However, academic and social outcomes for these bilingual or multilingual students remain highly variable indicating that meeting the needs for students who are D/HH continues to be challenging for many educators. Many D/HH students are reporting high levels of fatigue throughout their school day. To ensure the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students are being met, a more flexible approach needs to be considered to address barriers described by D/HH students. As such, the authors use the Universal Design for Learning framework to discuss fatigue for students who are D/HH in inclusive contexts, particularly those who are bilingual/multilingual.

Translanguaging Pedagogy to Support Bi/Multilingual Students' Language Learning in Social Studies

This qualitative case study investigates how Mrs. Vega, a high school social studies teacher, supported her emergent bi/multilingual immigrant students' development of academic, content-based language learning in a U.S. Government class. Drawing upon data collected as part of a larger ethnography and using translanguaging pedagogy as a theoretical frame, this chapter centers Mrs. Vega's translanguaging stance, design, and shift. Findings demonstrate the multiple and varied ways Mrs. Vega's pedagogy supported her students' already-present linguistic and cultural abilities in support of their disciplinary learning. Implications are provided for theory and practice.

Intercultural Challenges of Teaching in Multilingual/Multicultural Classrooms

Language and culture are inseparable entities forming an interdependent relationship within the multilingual classroom, which is both a melting pot of languages as well as a myriad of cultural backgrounds. In learning a common language, known as “lingua franca,” in the multilingual classroom, culture plays a critical role since the lingua franca makes communication possible between language teachers and multilingual students. Cultural connections and effective communication enables these students to engage in social and interactive activities and allows them to become active participants of the multilingual classroom. This chapter addresses some of the major intercultural challenges that both teachers and students of multilingual classrooms currently face within the “cultural jungle” of New York City. These multilingual students are simultaneously learning English as the lingua franca and participating in an intercultural educational experience in order to become linguistically and interculturally competent global citizens.

Enacting a Raciolinguistic Perspective for the “New Mainstream” in Literacy Classrooms

This chapter contributes to the conversation on reconceptualizing literacy teacher education through exploring the fallout of neoliberal sensibilities on U.S. schools. It continues to describe the new mainstream to be primarily racialized bi/multilingual students that defy the mono-mainstream assumption. The chapter then defines the mono-mainstream assumption that surreptitiously pervades educational systems with its deleterious effects on students. To combat this, the author explores how literacy teachers can enact a language architecture framework as an extension of a raciolinguistic perspective with practical classroom examples, including the terms used to describe students, their languages and literacies, how to negotiate hegemonic systems of accountability, specific pedagogical practices, and continued teacher reflexivity.

Multilingual Writing Support

This chapter will provide a research-based protocol for one-to-one writing conferencing that helps tutors and teachers to navigate the tension between standardizing multilingual students' language practices and honoring their rhetorically rich linguistic backgrounds through a series of activities in a ten-week writing center pedagogy course. This series of activities was specifically developed in an effort to respond to writing tutors who are always seeking strategies that effectively apply theoretical principles in practice. While this work focuses specifically on one-to-one writing tutoring, the topic of multilingual writing support is applicable to any English language learning context. By the end of this chapter, readers will have gained a practical strategy centered on using declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge to help preservice tutors and teachers develop metalinguistic awareness and foster critical consciousness through one-to-one conferencing.

An Assets-Oriented, Formative Oral Language Assessment for Multilingual Students

This chapter introduces an assets-oriented oral language formative assessment tool for use with multilingual students. The assessment tool, called the Oral Language Record (OLR), was developed to help teachers listen to, record, and analyze authentic student talk in a variety of settings. It provides valuable information about the vocabulary and language structures that students use, helps determine current instructional needs, provides a frame for capturing student talk, and documents growth over time. The OLR contains a continuum based on observable behaviors and an analysis tool that helps teachers determine next steps in instruction based on their observations. Used in conjunction with a student's writing sample and observation of the child's reading, the OLR provides a holistic view of a multilingual student's language and literacy acquisition, enabling the teacher to focus on the child's linguistic strengths to plan future instruction.