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Translanguaging in the BilingualClassroom: A Pedagogy for Learningand Teaching?ANGELA CREESEUniversity of BirminghamSchool of EducationMOSAIC Centre for Research on MultilingualismEdgbastonBirmingham B15 2TTUnited KingdomEmail: [email protected]

ADRIAN BLACKLEDGEUniversity of BirminghamSchool of EducationMOSAIC Centre for Research on MultilingualismEdgbastonBirmingham B15 2TTUnited KingdomEmail: [email protected]

This article reports on research that questions commonsense understandings of a bilingualpedagogy predicated on what Cummins (2005, 2008) refers to as the “two solitudes” assump-tion (2008, p. 65). It sets out to describe a flexible bilingual approach to language teachingand learning in Chinese and Gujarati community language schools in the United Kingdom. Weargue for a release from monolingual instructional approaches and advocate teaching bilin-gual children by means of bilingual instructional strategies, in which two or more languagesare used alongside each other. In developing this argument, the article takes a language ecol-ogy perspective and seeks to describe the interdependence of skills and knowledge acrosslanguages.

CUMMINS (2008) DEFINED BILINGUAL EDU-cation as “the use of two (or more) languages ofinstruction at some point in a student’s schoolcareer” (p. xii). Garcıa, Skutnabb-Kangas, andTorres-Guzman (2006) referred to multilingualschools that “exert educational effort that takesinto account and builds further on the diversityof languages and literacy practices that childrenand youth bring to school” (p. 14). This means go-ing beyond acceptance or tolerance of children’slanguages, to “cultivation” of languages throughtheir use for teaching and learning. Cummins re-ferred to research (August & Shanahan, 2006;Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian,2006) that demonstrates that considerable confi-dence can be placed in the positive outcomes ofbilingual education.

Bilingual classroom contexts are hugely varied,with multiple models and structures existing in

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different education systems across the world. Inthis article, we describe one particular model com-mon in many nations with linguistic and culturaldiversity, that of complementary schools, also knownas heritage language schools, supplementary schools,and community language schools.1 These schoolsare invariably established by community mem-bers and focus on language, culture, and heritageteaching. In the United Kingdom they are vol-untarily run and outside the state sector of con-trol. Since 2002, we have researched complemen-tary schools and have investigated the languagepractices of their participants in Bengali, Chi-nese, Gujarati, and Turkish schools in Birming-ham, Manchester, Leicester, and London, respec-tively (Creese, Barac, et al., 2008). The projectshave aimed to explore the social, cultural, andlinguistic significance of complementary schoolsboth within their communities and in wider soci-ety and to investigate how linguistic practices ofstudents and teachers in complementary schoolsare used to negotiate their multilingual and mul-ticultural identities.

104 The Modern Language Journal 94 (2010)

Complementary schools are institutions thatendorse multilingualism as a usual and normativeresource for identity performance (Creese, Bhatt,Bhojani, & Martin, 2006; Martin, Bhatt, Bhojani,& Creese, 2006) and strive to influence identityand cultural socializations, extending the bilin-gualism of their students (Creese, Bhatt, Bhojani,& Martin, 2008). Complementary schools’ par-ticular concern with community values and thenature of affiliation to and expertise in the com-munity language requires a pedagogy that re-sponds to young people and teachers who haveexperience of the diaspora in particular and dis-tinct ways (Anderson, 2008; Cummins, 2005). Inthe context of the classroom it is usually the casethat the young people’s bilingualism is Englishdominant, whereas their teachers are often com-munity language dominant. This article sets outto describe how teachers and students have devel-oped and co-constructed pedagogic practices forparticipants in complementary schooling. We usea language ecology perspective to describe the ide-ological, interrelational, and interactional affor-dances of these linguistically diverse classrooms(Creese & Martin, 2003; van Lier, 2008).

CLASSROOM LANGUAGE ECOLOGIES

An ecological approach considers the alreadyestablished with the new. van Lier’s (2008) eco-logical approach described the need to considerthe development of new languages alongside thedevelopment of existing languages. He stressedthe importance of the interrelationship betweenteacher and learners in making this connectionsalient. According to van Lier, the teacher en-gages the learner in pedagogic actions intendedto develop “a wide panoramic view of self” (2008,p. 54). From this teacher–learner engagement,new identity positions associated with languagelearning processes can emerge, with the teachershowing the learner the possibilities of these.Creese and Martin (2003, 2008) described class-rooms as ecological microsystems. They arguedfor the importance of exploring ecological minu-tiae of interactional practices in classrooms, link-ing these to the ideologies that pervade languagechoice and language policy. A similar point ismade by Jaffe (2007), who described a need for“microecologies” (p. 225) of linguistic, social, po-litical, and pedagogical practice.

The study of language ecology is the study ofdiversity within specific sociopolitical settings inwhich the processes of language use create, re-flect, and challenge particular hierarchies andhegemonies, however transient these might be.

An ecological perspective on multilingualism is“essentially about opening up ideological and im-plementational space in the environment for asmany languages as possible” (Hornberger, 2002,p. 30). At its heart is the dialectic between thelocal interactional and the social ideological. Anecological perspective also warns against too eas-ily reaching comprehensive, tidy findings. Kram-sch (2002) suggested that we use an ecologicalframework to voice the “contradictions, the un-predictabilities, and paradoxes that underlie eventhe most respectable research in language devel-opment” (p. 8; see also Kramsch & Steffensen,2008).

The language ecology metaphor offers a wayof studying the interactional order to explorehow social ideologies, particularly in relation tomultilingualism, are created and implemented.The purpose of this article is to consider howthe multilingual orientation of complementaryschools frames bilingual pedagogy as an ideol-ogy and how teachers and students practise itlocally and interactionally. In the larger macro-ideological order, which is increasingly hostile tomultilingualism and multiculturalism through itsinsistence on monolingualism in society, and inthe United Kingdom in particular (Blackledge,2005; Rassool, 2008), complementary schools po-tentially provide an alternative (Mirza & Reay,2000), safe (Garcıa, 2005; Martin, Creese, Bhatt,& Bhojani, 2004), and multilingual (Hornberger,2005) space for institutional bilingualism. We con-sider the possibilities they present to challenge themonolingual macro-order.

LANGUAGE SEPARATION AS BILINGUALPEDAGOGY

Bilingual education has traditionally arguedthat languages should be kept separate in thelearning and teaching of languages. We see thisexplained in an early text on “language distribu-tion in bilingual schooling” (Jacobson & Faltis,1990):

Bilingual educators have usually insisted on the sep-aration of the two languages, one of which is En-glish and the other, the child’s vernacular. By strictlyseparating the languages, the teacher avoids, it is ar-gued, cross-contamination, thus making it easier forthe child to acquire a new linguistic system as he/sheinternalizes a given lesson. . . . It was felt that the inap-propriateness of the concurrent use was so self-evidentthat no research had to be conducted to prove thisfact. (p. 4)

Keeping the languages separate, it is argued, helpsthe child. This discussion is brought up to date

Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge 105

in the rationale behind the two-way bilingual im-mersion programs of the United States, which aredescribed as “periods of instruction during whichonly one language is used (that is, there is no trans-lation or language mixing)” (Lindholm-Leary,2006, p. 89). According to Cummins (2005), anexplanation for this separateness is the continu-ing prevalence of monolingual instructional ap-proaches in our schools. He described the as-sumptions behind these approaches as follows:

1. Instruction should be carried out exclusivelyin the target language without recourse to thestudents’ L1 [first language].

2. Translation between L1 and L2 [second lan-guage] has no place in the teaching of languageor literacy. Encouragement of translation in L2teaching is viewed as a reversion to the discred-ited grammar/translation method . . . or concur-rent translation method.

3. Within L2 immersion and bilingual/duallanguage programs, the two languages should bekept rigidly separate: They constitute “two soli-tudes.” (p. 588)

The “two solitudes” to which Cummins referredhere are similarly captured by others in the re-search literature. Heller (1999) coined the termparallel monolingualism, in which “each varietymust conform to certain prescriptive norms” (p.271). Heller argued that students learn to be-come bilingual in particular ways (and thereforenot others) and that these constructions of bilin-gualism advantage particular groups of students.Baker (2003), building on Fishman (1967), de-scribed bilingualism with diglossia in which eachlanguage is used for distinct and separate socialfunctions; Swain (1983) used the phrase “bilin-gualism through monolingualism” (p. 4); Creeseand Blackledge (2008) used the term “separatebilingualism” to describe language learning class-room contexts in complementary schools whereteachers insist on the use of the target lan-guage only. Each term describes the boundariesput up around languages and represents a viewof the multilingual/bilingual student/teacher as“two monolinguals in one body” (Gravelle, 1996,p. 11).

There are emotional implications for insistenceon separate bilingualism in educational contexts.In 1981, Zentella recorded one of the teachersin her study saying, “When they don’t understandsomething in one language, they’ll go to the other,which is easier for them . . . and like, then some-times I have to be bouncing from one language tothe other, which is wrong” (Puerto Rican teacherparticipant).

The teacher in the Zentella (1981) study in-dicated her moral disapproval of “mixing” lan-guages in the classroom. Shin (2005), in her study,described attitudes toward codeswitching as neg-ative, noting that bilinguals themselves “may feelembarrassed about their code switching and at-tribute it to careless language habits” (p. 18).Setati, Adler, Reed, and Bapoo (2002) made ref-erence to the “dilemma-filled” (p. 147, as citedin Martin, 2005, p. 90) nature of codeswitchingin their study of South African classrooms. Mar-tin (2005), describing codeswitching in Malaysia,shows how:

the use of a local language alongside the “official”language of the lesson is a well-known phenomenonand yet, for a variety of reasons, it is often lambasted as“bad practice,” blamed on teachers’ lack of English-language competence . . . or put to one side and/orswept under the carpet. (p. 88)

These studies show that moving between lan-guages has traditionally been frowned upon ineducational settings, with teachers and studentsoften feeling guilty about its practice. Researchshows that codeswitching is rarely institutionallyendorsed or pedagogically underpinned. Rather,when it is used, it becomes a pragmatic responseto the local classroom context. Lin (2005) de-scribed student and teacher codeswitching prac-tices as “local, pragmatic, coping tactics andresponses to the socioeconomic dominance of En-glish in Hong Kong, where many students from so-cioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds withlimited access to English resources struggled to ac-quire an English-medium education for its socioe-conomic value” (p. 46; see also Lin, 1996). Martin(2005) spoke of codeswitching as offering class-room participants “creative, pragmatic and ‘safe’practices . . . between the official language of thelesson and a language which the classroom par-ticipants have a greater access to” (p. 89). Arthurand Martin (2006) argued that codeswitching al-lows participants to better accomplish the lessonand is a pragmatic response used to annotate textsand provide greater access.

TRANSLANGUAGING AS BILINGUALPEDAGOGY

The educational issues around parallel mono-lingualism have led practitioners and researchersto question the stricture of separate bilingualism.Cummins (2005) challenged the squandering ofbilingual resources in mainstream contexts. Heargued for a need to articulate bilingual instruc-tional strategies that teach explicitly for two-way


cross-language transfer. Anderson (2008) has re-cently called for flexible approaches to pedagogyto respond to bilingual contexts that do not fiteasily into existing paradigms. Lin and Martin(2005) have argued for more multilingual peda-gogic and curriculum research. The research doc-umented in Lin and Martin (2005) and Arthurand Martin (2006) described the pedagogic po-tentials behind codeswitching. These includeincreasing the inclusion, participation, and un-derstandings of pupils in the learning processes;developing less formal relationships between par-ticipants; conveying ideas more easily; and accom-plishing lessons. They spoke of the “pedagogicvalidity of codeswitching” (Arthur & Martin, 2006,p. 197) and considered ways in which the researchmight contribute to a “teachable” pedagogic re-source.

Important avenues of research have begun toquestion the validity of boundaries around lan-guages. Garcıa (2007) showed in her work in NewYork schools that languages are not hermeticallysealed units. Garcıa prefers the term translan-guaging (p. xii) to codeswitching to describe theusual and normal practice of “bilingualism with-out diglossic functional separation” in New Yorkclassrooms (p. xiii). Makoni and Mashiri (2007)suggested that rather than developing languagepolicies that attempt at hermetically sealing lan-guages, we should be describing the use of vernac-ulars that leak into one another to understand thesocial realities of their users. As Lemke (2002) ar-gued:

It is not at all obvious that if they were not politicallyprevented from doing so, “languages” would not mixand dissolve into one another, but we understand al-most nothing of such processes. . . . Could it be that allour current pedagogical methods in fact make mul-tilingual development more difficult than it need be,simply because we bow to dominant political and ide-ological pressures to keep “languages” pure and sep-arate? (p. 85)

To move away from conceptualizing multi-lingualism as parallel monolingualisms, Bailey(2007) argued for a focus on voice ratherthan language and makes a clear distinction be-tween codeswitching and heteroglossia. FollowingBakhtin (1981, 1986, 1994), he acknowledgedthat within every utterance there are traces ofthe social, political, and historical forces that haveshaped it. Bailey showed that rather than confin-ing signs to different languages as would be typi-cal in an account of codeswitching, heteroglossiaencompasses both monolingual and multilingualforms simultaneously, allowing for theorizing of

social and historical contexts of the utterance.Moving beyond conventional codeswitching re-search, Bailey argued that:

Heteroglossia can encompass socially meaningfulforms in both bilingual and monolingual talk; it canaccount for the multiple meanings and readings offorms that are possible, depending on one’s subjectposition; and it can connect historical power hierar-chies to the meanings and valences of particular formsin the here-and-now. (2007, p. 267)

Bailey demonstrated that the perspective of het-eroglossia allows one to distinguish between lo-cal functions of particular codeswitches and theirfunctions in relation to their social, political, andhistorical contexts, in ways that formal codeswitch-ing analysis does not. He convincingly arguedthat the perspective of heteroglossia “explicitlybridges the linguistic and the sociohistorical, en-riching analysis of human interaction” (p. 269)and is “fundamentally about intertextuality, theways that talk in the here-and-now draws mean-ings from past instances of talk” (p. 272).

LANGUAGE ECOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY

There are some examples of pedagogies that ex-plicitly seek to develop bilingual strategies basedon ecological perspectives. Hornberger (2002,2005, 2008) described her work on the continua ofbiliteracy as an ecological model in the sense thatlanguage and literacy features are nested and in-tersecting. One change along one point of a con-tinuum will cause potential changes along othercontinua, resulting in a reconfiguration of thewhole educational picture (Hornberger, 2002).In terms of optimizing pedagogy, Hornberger(2005) suggested that “bi/multilinguals’ learningis maximized when they are allowed and enabledto draw from across all their existing languageskills (in two+ languages), rather than being con-strained and inhibited from doing so by mono-lingual instructional assumptions and practices”(p. 607).

Another ecological pedagogic approach wasdescribed by Lopez (2008), who used the termconcurrent approaches in training prospective in-digenous teachers in Latin America. He describedconcurrent approaches as “generally untried butinnovative use of languages used in the businessof teaching and learning” (p. 143). Lopez arguedfor a bilingual pedagogy that shows that “in in-digenous everyday life, the two—or in some casesthree or more—languages are needed many timesin connection to one another and not as discretelyseparate as is often supposed” (p. 143).


Cummins (2005), too, made some explicit sug-gestions for developing bilingual strategies. Hesuggested:

(a) systematic attention to cognate relationshipsacross languages; (b) creation of student-authoreddual language books by means of translation from theinitial language of writing to the L2; other multimediaand multilingual projects can also be implemented(e.g., creation of iMovies, PowerPoint presentations,etc.); (c) sister class projects where students from dif-ferent language backgrounds collaborate using twoor more languages. (p. 588)

In the United Kingdom, research has demon-strated that bilingual children do not view theirliteracies and languages as separate but rather ex-perience them as “simultaneous” (Kenner, 2004;Robertson, 2006; Sneddon, 2000).

However, there is also some caution expressedin the research literature regarding the develop-ment of bilingual strategies/pedagogies based onflexible methods. Martin (2005) wrote:

And yet we need to question whether bilingual in-teraction strategies “work” in the classroom con-text. . . . Do they facilitate learning? Can classroomcode-switching support communication, particularlythe exploratory talk which is such an essential part ofthe learning process? A corollary to this is whetherteacher-training programmes (both pre-service andin-service), in multilingual contexts take into accountthe realities and pragmatics of classroom languageuse in such contexts. (p. 90)

Lin (1999) acknowledged the switching be-tween English and Cantonese in her study en-sured understanding and motivation, but shewarned against notions of easy transferability toother classrooms in other contexts and the dan-ger of participating in the reproduction of stu-dents’ disadvantage. Further, the development ofpedagogies that respond to the research litera-ture will not work in any “mechanistic generalis-able way” (Arthur & Martin, 2006, p. 197). Theimportance of responding to local circumstancesis made clear in the literature reviewed here. Al-though we can acknowledge that across all linguis-tically diverse contexts moving between languagesis natural, how to harness and build on this willdepend on the sociopolitical and historical envi-ronment in which such practice is embedded andthe local ecologies of schools and classrooms.

In the following sections we look at particularexamples of flexible bilingualism in the contextof complementary schools and consider some ofthe bilingual strategies used in complementaryschool classrooms. Before this, we briefly describe

the design of the study and the nature of the datacollected.

METHODS

The research project consisted of four inter-locking case studies with two researchers work-ing in two complementary schools in each offour communities.2 The case studies focused onGujarati schools in Leicester, Turkish schools inLondon, Cantonese and Mandarin schools inManchester, and Bengali schools in Birmingham(Creese, Barac, et al., 2008). Each case study iden-tified two complementary schools in which to ob-serve, record, and interview participants. After 4weeks observing in classrooms using an ethno-graphic team approach (Creese, Barac, et al.,2008), two key participant children were iden-tified in each school. These children and theirteachers were audio-recorded during the classesobserved, during break times, and, where possi-ble, as they entered and left the complementaryschool site. We interviewed stakeholders in theschools, including teachers and administrators,and the key participant children and their par-ents. We also collected key documentary evidenceand took photographs.

TRANSLANGUAGING IN COMPLEMENTARYSCHOOLS

This article describes two case studies fromour larger project on complementary schools inthe United Kingdom: Gujarati and Chinese. Theclasses at the four schools described are heldon different days of the week (Saturday, Sunday,and Thursday evening) and meet for around 2–3 hours weekly. The number of students attend-ing the Chinese and Gujarati schools varies be-tween 200 and 350, with the number of volunteerteachers somewhere between 15 and 35 (includ-ing teaching assistants). Teacher qualification andexperience also varies, with some teachers possess-ing qualified teacher status to work in the statesector and others having many years of experi-ence working voluntarily in the complementaryschool setting but with few formal teaching quali-fications.

We start with an assembly at Jalaram BalVikasma, one of the Gujarati schools in the study.Assemblies are held at the end of each Satur-day morning session so that parents picking uptheir children can attend. Assemblies are alwaysvery well attended by parents. The teachers sit atthe front and the side. Children sit on the floorfacing the front, with younger children (aged 5)


nearest the teachers and older children (aged 16–18) nearest parents. Parents are at the back ofthe hall. Each week, one particular class and itsteacher lead the assembly. It is also an opportunityfor the head teacher to address the whole school:young people, teachers, and parents. There are200 children on roll at the school, and the as-sembly is a busy event that requires teachers tomove furniture to accommodate all participants.In Extract 1, we see that SB,2 the head teacher,uses both Gujarati and English to speak to the au-dience. The translation is given after the text toshow the use of both English and Gujarati.3

EXTRACT 1Assembly Audio Transcript, Gujarati

. . . what’s going to happen here JalaramBal Vikasma? Holiday nathi . . . awata Shani-ware apne awanu chhe. we’re coming hereawta shaniware . . . [several students put up theirhands] . . . Amar? . . . [picks on Amar or Amit toreply] . . . Amare kidhu ne ke GCSE presentationchhe . . . awanu chhe. I know that we’re finish-ing on Friday in mainstream school, pun aiyaagal badhayne awanu chhe . . . I know, it’s a sur-prise. Khawanu etlu fine chhe, K warned me to-day . . . it’s something all of you will like, teacherswill like . . . something for all of us. . . . [points tothe class sitting in front of her] a balko a varsheGCSE karwana chhe etle next year a badha awshemehman thayne, mota thayne! . . . we’re not goingto take much time, ‘cause I’ve got few other thingsto tell you as well . . .

Assembly Audio Transcript, English

. . . what’s going to happen here in JalaramBal Vikasma? It’s not a holiday, we’ve tocome here next Saturday . . . we’re coming herenext Saturday . . . [several students put up theirhands] . . . Amar? . . . [picks on Amar or Amit toreply] . . . As Amar said, there’s GCSE presentation,you have to come . I know we’re finishing on Fri-day in mainstream School, but you all have to comehere . . . I know, it’s a surprise, lovely food , K [a par-ent] warned me today, it’s something all of youwill like, teachers will like . . . something for all ofus . . . [points to the class sitting in front of her]these children are doing GCSE this year so next yearthey will come as guests, all grown up! . . . we’re notgoing to take up much time ‘cause I’ve got a fewother things to tell you as well . . .

If we break down the interaction further, we areable to identify more specifically some of the bilin-gual strategies SB uses to engage her audience.

The following show which utterances are said inEnglish and which are said in Gujarati. We do thisnot because we wish to argue that each language isdelivering different functions but rather becausein classifying them into language groups, we canargue that such classification is meaningless forthe speaker, SB.

EXTRACT 1aPhrases Spoken in English

what’s going to happen here in Jalaram BalVikasma?Holidaywe’re coming hereGCSE presentationI know that we’re finishing on Friday in main-

stream school,I know, it’s a surprisewarned me today . . . it’s something all of you will

like, teachers will like . . . something for all ofus . . . .

next yearwe’re not going to take much time, ‘cause I’ve got

few other things to tell you as well . . .

Phrases Spoken in Gujaratiwe’ve to come here next Saturdaynext Saturday . . . As Amar said, there’sbut you all have to come here . . .

lovely food, Ksomething for all of us . . . these children are doing

GCSE this year sothey will come as guests, all grown up

We wish to make the following points from clas-sifying the utterances into two languages. First,both languages are needed simultaneously to con-vey the information about school openings andclosings; that is, each language is used to con-vey a different informational message, but it isin the bilingualism of the text that the full mes-sage is conveyed. As Lopez (2008) argued, bothlanguages are “needed” in connection to one an-other. The meaning of the message is not clearwithout both languages. Second, it is in the move-ment between languages that SB engages with herdiverse audience. The teachers, children, and par-ents have different levels of proficiency in bothGujarati and English. SB uses her languages toengage her audience. However, her “languages”do not appear separate for her in this social actbut rather a resource to negotiate meanings andinclude as much of the audience as possible. SB’slanguage indexes her knowledge of the socialand linguistic complexity of the community sheaddresses. We would argue that SB’s utterances


are examples of translanguaging in which thespeaker uses her languages in a pedagogic con-text to make meaning, transmit information, andperform identities using the linguistic signs at herdisposal to connect with her audience in com-munity engagement. Gujarati and English are notdistinct languages for the speaker in this context.SB does not confine signs to different languages;rather, her heteroglossia encompasses languageforms simultaneously.

In the second extract from a different Gujaraticlass in another school, we see another exam-ple of flexible bilingualism as an instructionalstrategy to engage students. PB, the teacher, hasgiven the class some pair work, and in the ex-tract the students are clarifying the task withtheir teacher before going on to do the task inpairs. In the following transcripts, it is not al-ways possible to indicate which student is speak-ing. However, the key participant (KP) child isoften the one the microphone picks up mostclearly.

EXTRACT 21 PB: . . . have discussion karie, ek ek topic apu

chhu badhyane, tame sharema karo . . .

2 ok . . . sssh . . . topic apu chhu . . . mari din-charya, daily routine, tame decide

3 karo kon bolshe . . .

4 <Now let’s discuss, I will give a topic eachto all, you share them, I’m giving

5 the topics . . . daily routine . . . you decide whospeaks . . .>

6 Ss: what does it mean?7 PB: mari dincharya, daily routine . . . Medha

ane Jaimini, mane shu thawu game8 <my daily routine . . . Medha and Jaimini,

what I’d like to be>9 Ss: what is it? [chat]

10 PB: . . . bai jana decide karo . . . only 5 minutej apu chhu . . . je awde e bolwanu

11 <both of you decide . . . giving you only 5minutes . . . speak what you can>

12 Ss: miss, basically shu karwanu . . . discussionkarya pachhi?

13 <miss, basically what do we have to do? Afterdiscussion, what?>

14 PB: bolwanu15 <speak>16 Ss: shu bolwanu?17 <speak what?>18 PB: je discuss karyu hoi19 <what you discussed>

20 Ss: oh . . . [chat] . . . etle we discuss it andthen decide what we gonna say . . . missame

21 ek bijanu kaie ke ek ek . . .

22 <so we discuss it . . . miss, do we speak abouteach other or one by one . . .>

23 PB: tame decide karo ke kone bolwu chhe . . .

24 <you decide who speaks>25 [PB allocates more topics to pairs while

students chat among themselves.]26 Ss: [off task] Seriously, yellow? [gig-

gles] . . . how do you know?27 Ss: you’re bad . . . [chat] . . .

28 PB: . . . astethi bolwanu, discuss karwanu . . .

29 <speak softly . . . do the discussion . . .>

30 Ss: . . . doesn’t ask you what I want to do . . .

31 Ss: . . . mane doctor banwu chhe . . . I don’treally want to be a doctor . . . sorry I do

32 want to be a doctor, actually I don’t mindbeing a doctor . . . I want to be . . . you

33 know for the kiddie ones . . . [chat] . . .

paediatrician . . . karanke nanachhokra

34 manda pade to sara karwani dawa apwichhe. Your turn, what do you want to

35 be?36 <I want to be a doctor . . . when little children

are ill, I want to give them37 medicines to make them better . . .>

38 Ss: I want to be a . . . watch seller [gig-gles] . . . Medha & Co [laughs] . . . hurryup then, I

39 said mine, you say yours . . . I don’t knowwhat you wana be . . . hurry up, sayyours

40 Ss: Listen then41 Ss: . . . Medha, hurry up, man . . . [chat in

English] . . . look behind you . . . [laughs,calls

42 Rupal] . . . Medha turn around . . .

[laughs] . . . [more chat] . . .

43 Ss: hu moti thaine . . .

44 <when I grow up . . .>

45 [General chatting and noise of discus-sions]

46 Ss: mane shu chhe . . . shuddup Medha,you’re such a loser!

47 <What is it for me . . .>

48 PB: OK, stop!49 Ss: mane ghadialni . . . Medha and

Co . . . Company of many watches . . .

50 <I want to [have a shop for] watches . . .>

Here both languages are used by teacher andstudents to establish and clarify the pedagogictask. The task involves getting students to discusstopics such as daily routines and what they wouldlike to be in the future. The phrase mari dincharya‘daily routine’ occurs twice early on in the ex-tract and shows the teacher using both languagesto focus the students on one of the assigned


topics. Both languages are also used to establishthe procedural knowledge about the task with“discussion/discuss” and “decide” repeated mul-tiple times in English, whereas the focus on thespeaking skill is given in Gujarati. Both languagesare needed to understand what is expected fromthe task. The students, too, ask the teacher to clar-ify the task in both languages (lines 12, 16, 20).Once the students are working in pairs, we seethat English is used to joke, tease, and play around(lines 46–47). While doing pair work, students useboth Gujarati and English to describe who theywant to be (lines 31–35). It is the combinationof both languages that keeps the task moving for-ward. We suggest that the teacher and studentsare finely tuned to the normative pattern of thisclassroom ecology—that is, they sense the limits ofwhat is acceptable in terms of the use of one lan-guage in relation to the other. This is because theteacher is aware of her learners’ bilingualism—its range and limitation and the identities thatmake use of it. The students, too, are aware oftheir teacher’s expectations and identity position-ings, which are played out through bilingualism.In Extract 3, rather unusually, the teacher requestsEnglish and a student insists on Gujarati.

EXTRACT 31 PB: pachhi?2 <then?>3 Ss: [doesn’t answer]4 PB: OK, to Englishma boli nakh, chal bol5 <OK, speak in English, come on>

6 Ss: I wake up in the morning, then do mybrush . . . and I have bath, then

7 I go to school8 PB: ketla wage?9 <at what time?>

10 Ss: eight o’clock11 PB: shema ja, chaline, gadima?12 <how do you get there, walking, in a car?>13 Ss: I walk it14 PB: huh? Chaline15 <walking>16 Ss: [interrupting] ude17 <he flies>18 PB: tari najikma thay tari school gharthi?19 <is your school near your house?>20 Ss: yah21 PB: oh, pachhi?22 <then?>23 Ss: I do my lesson24 [Ss laugh]25 PB: ketla wage tari nishal sharu thai?26 <when does your school start?>27 Ss: eight forty28 PB: ketla wage puri . . .

29 <when does it finish?>30 Ss: [interrupting] athne chalis ke ne31 <why don’t you say 8:40 [in Gujarati]>

The teacher is willing to accept the students’English as long as the task is completed bilin-gually. At each turn she returns to Gujarati ora combination of the two languages. Rather un-usually, we also see a student insist on Gujaratirather than the English used in student answers.The longer extract (not shown here) shows thatdespite the student’s insistence on the use of Gu-jarati (line 30), the student(s) continue(s) to replyto the teacher in English. The interactional pat-tern of teacher/Gujarati and student/English isa common phenomenon in Gujarati complemen-tary schools (Martin et al., 2006). It is perhaps away to save face with regard to the different levelsand proficiencies in the two languages. Certainlyin the wider study we found that generally stu-dents’ English proficiency was greater than theircommunity language proficiency. In contrast, wefound that teachers’ community language profi-ciency was higher than their English. However,we suggest that this is much more than a face-saving act to hide a lack of proficiency. Rather,we suggest that the bilingual participants in theclassroom are also using their bilingualism as astyle resource (Androutsopoulos, 2007) for iden-tity performance to peers. Thus, their bilingual-ism in the classroom is not so much about whichlanguages but which voices are engaged in iden-tity performance.

A final point to note from these extracts is theuse of heteroglossic terms such as sharema and En-glishma. These are common in this teacher’s dis-course. In the same lesson, the teacher uses thefollowing terms: junglema ‘in the jungle,’ bookma‘in the book,’ yearma ‘in the last year,’ schoole ‘toschool,’ and daddyne ‘to daddy.’ Rather than de-scribing these as either Gujarati or English or asEnglish with a Gujarati suffix, we would describethem as heteroglossic. They are usually coined bythe teacher but taken up and used by the stu-dents, too, as a seemingly acceptable form. Theseheteroglossic phrases appear to serve as a linguis-tic resource that the teacher uses to keep the taskmoving forward. They are also likely to reflect thelinguistic practices of PB beyond the classroom,indexing other language ecologies.

The next extract comes from the Mandarinschool in the Chinese case study. The teacherhas been working on a folk story with thestudents, “Houyi shoots the suns and Chang’e fliesto the moon.” At the time this interaction takesplace, the class is involved in learning key vocab-ulary and reading aloud the textbook dialogue,


which introduces festivals and the stories associ-ated with them. The teacher then embarks on along process of narrating and explaining the story.Extract 4 is one brief sample from this literacyevent.

EXTRACT 41 T . . . <Someone stole the arrow> . . . <

because> people, they know that2 they will not survive if there was no sun

right? If there is no sun, they will not3 survive either. So people took the

arrow . . .

4 Zhang: (interrupting and expressing doubt)? <And this Houyi

5 didn’t know/understand?>

6 T: It’s a legend.7 Zhang: Oh it’s a legend. Let’s just let it go.

Hey . . .

8 T: . . . <Then> . . . —<Houyi found that his last arrow

9 disappeared>

The storytelling provides much student laugherand opportunities to question. The students areanimated. There is student consensus about theimplausibility of the story. Students think it ab-surd that Houyi could not understand that peo-ple need the sun to live. There is ridicule, butthere is also engagement. In terms of bilingualpedagogy, there are several points to make. First,the teacher allows the interruption of the usualclassroom discourse routine of “initiate, respond,feedback” (IRF) moves. The interruption fromZhang (line 4) happens in Mandarin, whereasthe teacher’s previous utterance is in English. Aswith the earlier Gujarati example, we argue thatbecause the student questioning and challengingis done bilingually, it is accepted by the teacher.It appears that in the pacing of the bilingual in-teraction playful naughtiness is allowed becausestudents are still involved in the learning of folkstories, which is the pedagogic task in hand. Thetranslanguaging that the teacher and students en-gage in keeps the task moving and interrupts theusual IRF discourses of classroom life. A secondpoint, as with the other data sets presented here,is that both languages are needed for the storyto be understood; that is, the teacher uses and al-lows the student’s bilingualism for the story to bemade complete. Each language individually is notsufficient to convey the full narrative. As shownin our field notes from one of the non-Mandarin-speaking researcher’s records: “Children seem tohave got the point of the story, which I havefailed to. They must do this through the teacher’scode switching as it is not achievable through the

English only.” A third point is that the teacherskilfully uses her bilingualism to involve students.She narrates the story in Mandarin, keeping tothe storyline. She explains the story in English,emphasizing the story’s moral tale. A final pointto be made in regard to bilingual strategies is theimportance of identity work for both students andteachers. The student in Extract 4 is able to use hisbilingualism to question and challenge the story,displaying his linguistic knowledge and sophisti-cation but also using the movement between lan-guages to distance himself from the storyline andsome of what it indexes. The teacher, too, is able touse her bilingualism for identity work, in her caseto move between endorsing the folk story messagebut also to “side” with her students’ notion of theridiculous nature of the storyline. She uses herbilingualism to pace the teaching and enable thelesson to be accomplished.

Extract 5 comes from the same Chinese school.Here, we see the classroom participants nego-tiate an interaction bilingually, through “bilin-gual label quests.” Martin (2005) attributed theconcept of label quests to Heath (1986) butextended the definition to describe bilinguallabel quests in which the teacher elicits la-bels from the students, allowing for the teach-ing to be “accomplished bilingually” (Martin,2005, p. 83). Martin (2003) described this as acommon feature of bilingual classrooms. In Ex-tract 5 we see an example from the Chinese datafrom the Mandarin school. A new vocabulary itemis being taught, panwang , which means “to lookforward to/long for.” To capture the “cloze” na-ture of this teaching interaction, we do not pro-vide a translation directly against panwang untilthe teacher herself does.

EXTRACT 5T: ? <The fourth term? > .<‘panwang,’> ? <How do you say ‘pan-wang’ ?> , ? <For example, whatdo we ‘panwang’ ?> , <‘panwang .’> Expect,look forward to. Write down the explanation be-side the words, in case you forget it later.<‘panwang ’>, the fourth one, means look for-ward to. , ? <For example, what dowe long for?>

The teacher introduces a key vocabulary item,which will later appear in a dialogue to be read tothe class by a pair of students. The teacher repeatsthe new term panwang four times, asking studentsto consider how it is said before giving a clue inChinese that it is a verb: “What do we panwang ?”She then uses English to give the definition“expect, look forward to.” We see that the term is


given in one language and explained in anotherlanguage. The “translation” performs a pedagogicstrategy of accomplishing one task (new vocabu-lary teaching) before moving to the next (story-telling). There are many variations of bilinguallabel quests in complementary school classrooms.Sometimes the teacher makes the bilingual labelquest and also self-answers; at other times, theteacher asks in one language and expects the stu-dents to provide the answer in the other language.In complementary schools, we see examples ofbilingual quests from English to the communitylanguage and also from the community languageinto English (for further examples, see Martinet al., 2006).

In Extract 6, we see a further example of bilin-gual label quests. This time, it is student-initiatedand the data come from the Cantonese comple-mentary school. KP is one of the key participantchildren in the study. The vocabulary item is hang ,which in English means “to navigate.”

EXTRACT 61 KP: I’ve got, I’ve got one, ‘ ,’ I’ve got ‘ ’

wrong. <I’ve got, I’ve got one,2 ‘hang .’ I’ve got ‘hang’ wrong .>3 T: [ . <That’s right .>4 KP: [‘ ’ . <‘hang .’>5 T: ‘ ’ <The word ‘hang ’>, ‘ ’

<Some of you had6 written the word ‘hang’ incorrectly>.

‘ ’ ? <How do you write the7 word ‘hang ’?>

Here the students check their test scores. Asearlier, this is a bilingual classroom with youngpeople bringing in their different voices in iden-tity performance. We see KP isolate the Chineseterm hang ‘to navigate.’ The teacher picks up onthis, and in the longer extract (not shown here),the teacher uses the students’ concern with theirincorrect answer to teach other vocabulary itemsfrom the text, focusing the students on their writ-ing and literacy practices.

DISCUSSION

Teachers and students construct and partici-pate in a flexible bilingual pedagogy in assembliesand classrooms. This pedagogy adopts a translan-guaging approach and is used by participants foridentity performance as well as the business of lan-guage learning and teaching. This approach to abilingual pedagogy allows complementary schoolsan avenue for the reproduction of social, commu-nity, and pedagogic values and goals.

We have suggested that as participants engagein flexible bilingualism, the boundaries between

languages become permeable. We have used theterms translanguaging (Garcia, 2007) and het-eroglossia (Bailey, 2007; Bakhtin, 1984, 1986) todescribe language fluidity and movement. Wewish to emphasize the process by which bilingualparticipants in complementary schools “encom-pass socially meaningful forms in both bilingualand monolingual talk” (Bailey, 2007, p. 267). Inother words, we think the bilingual teachers andstudents in the complementary schools in thisstudy used whatever signs and forms they had attheir disposal to connect with one another, in-dexing disparate allegiances and knowledges andcreating new ones.

We have focused on how this is achieved ped-agogically and have argued that flexible bilin-gualism is used by teachers as an instructionalstrategy to make links for classroom participantsbetween the social, cultural, community, and lin-guistic domains of their lives. Pedagogy in theseschools appears to emphasize the overlappingof languages in the student and teacher ratherthan enforcing the separation of languages forlearning and teaching. We acknowledge, how-ever, that within complementary schools ide-ologies often clash, with as many argumentsarticulated for separate bilingualism as for flexiblebilingualism (Creese & Blackledge 2008; Creese,Barac, et al., 2008).

Our data find much in keeping with the lan-guage ecology and bilingual pedagogy literaturereviewed earlier in this article. In our research, wealso find examples of the need for both languages,for the drawing across languages, for the addi-tional value and resource that bilingualism bringsto identity performance, lesson accomplishment,and participant confidence. We have attempted toidentify some of these through the data presentedhere.

Some of the specific knowledge and skills shownby classroom participants in practising flexiblebilingualism and flexible pedagogy included thefollowing:

1. Use of bilingual label quests, repetition, andtranslation across languages;

2. Ability to engage audiences through trans-languaging and heteroglossia;

3. Use of student translanguaging to establishidentity positions both oppositional and encom-passing of institutional values;

4. Recognition that languages do not fit intoclear bounded entities and that all languages are“needed” for meanings to be conveyed and nego-tiated;

5. Endorsement of simultaneous literacies andlanguages to keep the pedagogic task moving;


6. Recognition that teachers and students skil-fully use their languages for different functionalgoals such as narration and explanation;

7. Use of translanguaging for annotating texts,providing greater access to the curriculum, andlesson accomplishment.

If we are to move beyond “squandering ourbilingual resources” (Cummins, 2005, p. 585)and easing the burden of guilt associated withtranslanguaging in educational contexts, furtherresearch is needed on classroom language ecolo-gies to show how and why pedagogic bilingualpractices come to be legitimated and accepted byparticipants. An ecological perspective requiresus to question the pedagogic validity (Arthur &Martin, 2006) of separate bilingualism. Like Linand Martin (2005), we see the need for furtherresearch to explore what “teachable” pedagogicresources are available in flexible, concurrentapproaches to learning and teaching languagesbilingually.

NOTES

1We use the term complementary school to acknowl-edge the work these schools do to complement the ed-ucation of the young people attending them in relationto statutory education. We prefer the term complemen-tary to supplementary, which we argue carries a “deficit”connotation of educational failure. Following Garcıa’s(2005) critique of heritage language as a term to replacebilingualism, we are also mindful of the difficulties asso-ciated with this term. We settle here on complementaryschools.

2Pseudonyms are used for purposes of confidentiality.3Transcription conventions: In keeping with the the-

oretical approach to linguistic practice that emergedfrom this work, we make no distinction between dif-ferent “languages” in the transcribed data. We use ro-manized transliteration for all languages other thanCantonese and Mandarin, where we retain Chineseorthography.

(.) pause of less than a second(2.5) length of pause in secondsspeech transcribed speech<speech > translated speechCAPITALS loud( ) speech inaudible[ ] stage directions

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Prof. Elana Shohamy: Winner of the UCLES/ILTALifetime Achievement AwardProfessor Elana Shohamy has been selected to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award to be presentedat the 32nd International Language Testing Association/Language Teaching Research Colloquium(ILTA/LTRC) meeting, which will be held in Cambridge, UK in April 2010.

Over a long career, Elana has maintained her program of empirical research, her insider critical critiqueof the basis of language assessment and her concern for understanding the interaction between languageassessment and language policy. After completing her PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1978, shesoon started to raise questions about the nature and use of tests. It is particularly in this area thather influence has been most felt: Her recognition of the power of tests, whether in education or inimmigration, built the critical link between testing and language policy, showing language tests to beone of the most common instruments for enforcing language policy; her influence was the core of thegrowing emphasis on ethics.

In her career, she has built a number of significant tests and has made major contributions to theunderstanding of washback and other key research areas. The quality of her research and scholarshiphas built her a major place as a leader in the field, combining academic and professional activities.Furthermore, her example and teaching have built a generation of language testers who look to heras a leader. She is Professor of Language Education at Tel Aviv University, but she has taught at a largenumber of universities in various parts of the world, was the research director at the National ForeignLanguage Center in Washington, DC, and is affiliated with CALPER (Center for Advanced LanguageProficiency Education at Research) at the Pennsylvania State University.

She was one of the founders of an early national language testing group (ACROLT), chaired the AILACommission on Language Testing and Evaluation, and served as President of ILTA in 1999. Apart fromher own extensive list of publications, she has played a major role in editing, serving on the editorialboards of Language Testing , Language Assessment Quarterly, and The Modern Language Journal and asfounding co-editor of Language Policy.

Because of her many significant contributions over the years, the committee is pleased to announcethat Professor Elana Shohamy has been selected to receive the 2010 University of Cambridge LocalExaminations Syndicate (UCLES)/ILTA Lifetime Achievement Award.

From the 2010 UCLES/ILTA Lifetime Achievement Award Committee