Translingual Practice in Response to Global English Hegemony

Based on an interview with an international undergraduate student, I examine the theory of translingual practice considering overcoming language differences to achieve a set communicative goal. Differing language ownership causes meaning to arise from negotiation practices based on local situations. The negotiation of power relations relates to the negotiation of semantic meaning. This subject is influenced by pedagogy and the spread of locally-influenced Englishes in the wake of globalization. Implicit in contact zone encounters are issues of power, multiculturalism and language rights. Contact zones of English are inherently power-ridden, so a range of strategies are necessary for effective negotiation of voice and interests. This paper examines the background of translingual practice and analyzes the negotiation strategies used to overcome varying levels of English ownership.Master of ArtsLiberal StudiesUniversity of Michigan-Flinthttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145593/1/Wentz2018.pdfDescription of Wentz2018.pdf : Thesi

Toward a translingual composition: ancient rhetorics and language difference

The purpose of this dissertation is to outline a pedagogy that promotes language difference in college composition classrooms. Scholarship on language difference has strived for decades to transform teaching practices in mainstream, developmental, and second-language writing instruction. Despite compelling arguments in support of linguistic diversity, a majority of secondary and postsecondary writing teachers in the U.S. still privilege Standard English. However, non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers worldwide, a fact which promises to redefine what "standard" means from a translingual perspective. It is becoming clearer that multilingual writers, versed in flexible hermeneutic strategies and able to draw on a variety of Englishes and languages to make meaning, have significant advantages over monolingual students. My dissertation anticipates the pedagogical and programmatic changes necessitated by this global language shift. To this end, I join a number of scholars in arguing for a revival of classical style and the progymnasmata, albeit with the unique agenda of strengthening pedagogies of language difference. Although adapting classical rhetorics to promote translingual practices such as code-meshing at first seems to contradict the spirit of language difference given the dominant perception of Greco-Roman culture as imperialistic and intolerant of diversity, I reread neglected rhetoricians such as Quintilian in order to recover their latent multilingual potential

META-NET Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe 2020

In everyday communication, Europe’s citizens, business partners and politicians are inevitably confronted with language barriers. Language technology has the potential to overcome these barriers and to provide innovative interfaces to technologies and knowledge. This document presents a Strategic Research Agenda for Multilingual Europe 2020. The agenda was prepared by META-NET, a European Network of Excellence. META-NET consists of 60 research centres in 34 countries, who cooperate with stakeholders from economy, government agencies, research organisations, non-governmental organisations, language communities and European universities. META-NET’s vision is high-quality language technology for all European languages. “The research carried out in the area of language technology is of utmost importance for the consolidation of Portuguese as a language of global communication in the information society.” — Dr. Pedro Passos Coelho (Prime-Minister of Portugal) “It is imperative that language technologies for Slovene are developed systematically if we want Slovene to flourish also in the future digital world.” — Dr. Danilo Türk (President of the Republic of Slovenia) “For such small languages like Latvian keeping up with the ever increasing pace of time and technological development is crucial. The only way to ensure future existence of our language is to provide its users with equal opportunities as the users of larger languages enjoy. Therefore being on the forefront of modern technologies is our opportunity.” — Valdis Dombrovskis (Prime Minister of Latvia) “Europe’s inherent multilingualism and our scientific expertise are the perfect prerequisites for significantly advancing the challenge that language technology poses. META-NET opens up new opportunities for the development of ubiquitous multilingual technologies.” — Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan (German Minister of Education and Research

A Content-Integrated Translingual Literature Curriculum for Chinese-Speaking University-Level EFL Learners

The purpose of this paper was to outline a new translingual model of post-secondary EFL curriculum for Chinese-speaking English language learners. The curricular guide presents a content-integrated literature syllabus aimed at building competence in both communicative and critical-creative domains. A translingual coursework, which may involve code-switching, translanguaging, translation in language teaching (TILT), and World Englishes contact literature, is argued to uniquely benefit Chinese-speaking EFL learners on the road toward English and higher-order thinking competence. The curriculum utilizes the Tang-era poetry of Du Fu, and the modern prose of Ha Jin as content for lessons on the English article system, phrasal verbs, and critical thinking

Evaluating a Translingual Administration of the Early Grades Math Assessment (EGMA) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Translanguaging is a view around languages that normalizes diglossia without separation: the linguistic resources of the bilinguals are considered one integrated system. Translanguaging is also a language practice of bilinguals, who select features from their entire linguistic repertoire to make sense of the world around them. Translanguaging is widely used by students and teachers in the bilingual classroom, as it allows students to build upon their entire set of resources, enhance learning outcomes, perform identities, and develop their languages even further. However, translanguaging is rarely used in assessments of bilinguals. Assessments of bilinguals, especially large-scale tests, are typically monolingual in focus and not appropriate for a large portion of the population, who cannot perform as one or two monolinguals. While psychometricians and test developers have spent large amount of resources in developing and testing linguistic accommodations, their efforts are not entirely solving the problems faced by bilinguals. Translanguaging is a framework that may overcome the limitations of linguistic accommodations. However, there is few research on how to properly implement translanguaging in assessments, particularly, in content assessments. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of implementing a translingual administration of the EGMA assessment in the region of Mbandaka, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Using a mixed-methods design, I looked at the effect of translanguaging on scores and the alignment of the framework with the classroom practices enounced by teachers. The results of this study show that the translingual version of the EGMA had a positive effect on the scores of girls who identified as bilinguals, and improved the reliability estimates of all the tasks. The results also show that the translingual EGMA is more appropriate for the context of Mbandaka, yet there are characteristics that prevent us from considering the test fully appropriate for the region. Further research must shed light on the particular aspects of the translingual administration that explained the improvements observed in this study. Future studies should also clarify potential routes to a better and more effective implementation of translanguaging in content assessments

Negative translanguaging space : mobility and immobility in inner-city Leeds

In this chapter we aim to provide an understanding of how multilingual individuals navigate institutional and policy discourses, in our case discourses around social entrepreneurship. We do so through a study which follows the production of a business plan for a social enterprise, or community interest company, the aim of which is to secure funding for heritage-related activities in Leeds, UK, for Eastern and Central European communities, in particular those who identify as Roma

Translanguaging and academic writing in English-only classrooms: a case-study from Bangladeshi higher education

The study applied a translanguaging approach in a writing skill development class in the English department of a Bangladeshi public university. Data were collected through classroom observation, a pedagogical intervention, a focus group discussion with students, and a semi-structured interview with the class teacher. The study findings challenge monolingual approaches to academic writing in particular and demonstrate how a planned translanguaging approach allows teachers to relate English content to learners' local language(s) and experience, thus promoting greater understanding and metalinguistic awareness while also affirming the bilingualism and supporting bilingual learners in their classrooms. These findings have implications for policy and practices designed to improve learning outcomes, as well as to enhance the satisfaction and self-esteem of multilingual students studying in an otherwise monolingual classroom located in multilingual countries

Mobilizing Resources: Towards a Transnational Orientation in the Composition Classroom

In this dissertation, I present two studies on transnational, multilingual undergraduate students which focus on students’ rich, complex communication patterns across contexts. First, I examine the linguistic, literate, rhetorical, and cultural resources they deploy to make meaning across non-academic contexts as they take care of everyday tasks, navigate different linguistic and cultural landscapes, build relationships, and broker meaning for others. Next, I explore how the students mobilize their multiple resources and strategies to learn, write, and co-construct meaning with others in academic contexts. I discuss how these strategies are often constrained by English Only discourses and policies in the classroom and, at times, by students’ own competing attitudes towards their own and others’ language and knowledge-making practices. I argue that transnational, multilingual students’ resources are often both invisible and undervalued in academic contexts – to the students themselves and their teachers. Students often feel it is inappropriate or irrelevant for them to draw from their many resources and their lived experience in U.S. classrooms, but I also contend that writing teachers, administrators, and the field of Rhetoric and Composition have a “blind spot” (Donahue) with regards to transnational students, and that increased attention to this population is vital. Not only are higher education demographics changing rapidly, but – in a field that aims to be inclusive – we need to orient better to the border thinking, translingual and translation practices, and the rhetorical and cultural knowledge that these students bring to our writing classrooms and programs. I propose that bringing scholarship in translingual and transnational literacy studies into conversation with cultural rhetorics opens an approach to diversity that validates and centers transnational students. Through a TCR pedagogy (translingual, transnational, transcultural + cultural rhetorics), writing teachers and program can create classrooms, which sustain transnational, multilingual students’ resources, and which cultivate self-reflexivity and critical awareness. Though I focus on transnational, multilingual students, a TCR pedagogy will also support and benefit other learners in the First-Year Composition classroom

An Interdisciplinary Study of the Rule of Trauma and Early Host-Foreign Language Immersions in Significant Language Learning and Translingual Identity Formations

Through the reading of various self-narratives that focus on adults looking back at their memories of host/foreign language learning during the periods of childhood and adolescence, this interdisciplinary dissertation studies language as a collective and individual transformational phenomenon. Drawing from my own experiences as a foreign language learner and second language educator, and from discussions of psychoanalytic views on migration and language learning, my thesis looks at language beginnings as influencing the initial and ongoing development of the speaking subject. I research the manner in which translingual narratives, as literary discursive constructs, testify to writers’ attempts at symbolizing their realities within the continuum of constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed identities. By examining writers’ primary processes through descriptions of dreams, narrated breaks in language, slips of pen and excesses in discourse, my work studies the ego’s attachment to language and focuses on the manner in which host-foreign language immersions, as socio-emotional occurrences may interact with and respond to individuals’ known and seemingly forgotten experiences. Aside from paying close attention to the affective and social authority that resides within all internalized languages, my work zeros in on the concept of early forced versus chosen socio-cultural and linguistic relocations. I look at how host/foreign immersions and significant language learning equate to emotional trauma, and into the manner in which such trauma often becomes synthesized as a benign occurrence, enabling individuals to transform and redefine their lives within the natural dynamics of aggression that exist within subjects’ third space