Reflection 5

Translanguaging in the Bilingual Classroom:                                           

 A Pedagogy for Learning and Teaching?

By ANGELA CREESE and ADRIAN BLACKLEDGE

The discussion around translanguaging in bilingual classroom revealed a new role of codeswitching in a language classroom. In an Armenian EFL classroom, this would be considered a negative attempt both on the part of the teacher and the learner. Using L1 is attributed cross-contamination, careless language habits, and so on. However, in a complementary school, where ecological approach dominates, bilingual instruction can be beneficial for a number of reasons, including conveying complete information, engaging with diverse audience, making meaning, transmitting information, performing identities, keeping the task moving forward, etc.

 Among these, I think, the performance of identities is prevalent. While in an Armenian EFL context, this identity is performed in the ecology outside the classroom, in complementary schools, there is the urge to negotiate multicultural identities. This makes links for classroom participants between social, cultural, community, and linguistic domains of their lives.