Reading Across All Languages: The Translingual Approach

This final blog is about my own misunderstanding of the original topic and question I began to formulate only a few posts ago, about attitudes toward “home language” in the college reading classroom, and how second language readers might draw upon L1 as a resource.  I started to write about how treating L1 as helpful rather than problematic might lead to more success, and included a sentence, which I’ll explain the significance of later, about “positive impacts” of the use of L1 while reading L2 texts.  

The concept of L1 as a problem was easy for me to grasp, as I had witnessed and previously participated in this orientation toward language myself (see Blog 5, and also descriptions of English Only criticism generated from a simple Google search, which cite teachers punishing students for speaking Spanish in school hallways.  I mention these due to how they so closely mirror the practices I wrote about in that blog).  

speak your language- receive a ticket!

I’m pretty sure I thought I was going to find several empirical studies, such as this one,  which revealed how students who used L1 as a resource were more successful readers, drawing upon various cross-linguistic strategies to comprehend the texts they read more thoroughly.  My idea was that by understanding such studies, I would, in the future, react differently to practices which promote English Only policies at classroom and institutional levels (rather than ignoring them, participating in them, or feeling uncomfortable with them but not knowing exactly why).  In addition, I hoped to understand how to provide activities in my own classroom which would encourage the use of L1 while reading L2 texts, enabling students to benefit from the “positive impacts” I mentioned above.  

If asked what such positive impacts might look like, I probably would have described something about students becoming more highly skilled readers and writers of English.  I saw my stance on this reflected in John Trimbur's account of historical factors leading to monolingualism in the United States, which traced the American roots of linguistic intolerance back to statements made by the Founding Fathers.

Trimbur explained that "the question traditionally asked in writing studies is how cross-language relations inhibit or facilitate students' mastery of academic literacy in English."   Since the writings of John Trimbur and Bruce Horner have so significantly changed my thinking on this topic, I'm going to focus the remainder of my final blog primarily on ideas set forth by these authors, and the concept that my question, "needs to be changed, to ask instead how...available linguistic resources can be tapped to promote bilteracy and multilingualism" rather than just proficiency in English (Trimbur, 2006, p. 586).  In light of this new question, promoting  L1 as a stepping stone toward better English suddenly seems a bit in line with English Only, monolingualist policies that see languages as fixed, static entities, some of which are more correct or appropriate than others.  (I first read about the history behind these overarching and largely unexamined monolingualist perspectives in current college composition contexts in Trimbur and Horner’s English Only and U.S. College Composition - see Blog 6 for a more detailed summary of the article.)

The goal as I see it now is not to use one language to help students become more proficient in another target language, more correct language, or more standard variety.  Rather, the multilingual approach encourages an interaction between all languages in ways that change them, while changing what actually constitutes a powerful language in the first place.  In this way, students are given agency as readers and writers who participate “in the creation and re-creation of language and its constitution of their world” (p. 157).  

The intersection of the two speech bubbles where this all happens.  The green language and the yellow language, through interaction, become the new red language.  The red language will later change when it meshes with another.  No one language is ever fixed or static.  

Horner and Zhan-Lu identified some typical approaches to difference in student writing, which are described in the chart below.  I’m including it here as it provides for me a clear visual, demonstrating how the multilingual approach differs from approaches I had in mind a few blogs ago.  

Common approaches to difference between student language and EAE

The second language acquisition approach, laid out in the second row, particularly jumped out at me, as I’ve taken entire courses which advocate this method of helping students to identify, through proofreading strategies, their own mistakes, which deviate from the target language (Edited American English, or EAE) due to the development of student interlanguage. The accommodationist approach seemed familiar as well.  Proponents of this stance recognize both EAE as the discourse of power and the student’s home language (or variety) as valid.  Students are therefore invited to write in their L1 or home dialect, but only during drafting stages. In order to gain access to EAE (and thus the power which mastery of the discourse promises) final drafts are ultimately translated into the standard variety.  

Horner and Zhan-Lu argued that the first three approaches in the chart are actually aligned with a monolingual English Only policy “in the limited degree to which they acknowledge heterogeneity in language practices and in the reifications of language and identity they support” (p. 146).  Much like my original idea of how students might draw upon L1 as a resource to read and write more successfully (whatever that means) in English, these approaches only teach conformation to EAE, which is seen a fixed target language to be mastered.  It therefore becomes impossible for languages to interact in ways that change them.  

The multilingual approach, on the other hand, gives students agency as writers to create change.  Language is changed and so are the languages of power.  This process of creation and re-creation aligns with the natural, fluid nature of language, defying and rejecting the typically unquestioned and unexamined monolingual, fixed-language practices the other approaches promote, and the English Only policies that have become so accepted as the norm.  

chart from Horner, NeCamp and Donahue

The authors I’ve read throughout this blogging journey now refer to their prefered outlook as the “translingual approach.” As I understand it, the term translingual is preferred over multilingual, since a traditional multilingualist might see a situation which involves many discrete, static and separate languages existing within a person.  As mentioned above, and as Horner et al. have argued and demonstrated through their writings, languages do not exist as such rigidly separate entities, but rather, interact to mold and shape new linguistic possibilities.  Translingualism emphasises the need to adopt fluid and flexible relationships within and across languages, while “viewing language differences not just as rights, but as resources” (p. 304)  Such linguistic resources are developed as ways to make meaning, convey meaning, and pursue knowledge.  So, I have arrived right back to the idea of language as a resource. I just failed to initially realize the possibilities involved when these resources are drawn upon to directly confront monolinguilist stances, and to honor and recognize the true, fluctuating and boundaryless nature of language, while encouraging and welcoming multilingualism (in the translingual sense).  

my initial attempts to summarize the Translingual Approach
(I prefer the chart above)

Before briefly describing what the translingual approach might look like in a classroom setting, I’d like to emphasize (due to how complex this concept might at first seem and my own difficulty describing it) that even Horner et al. stated their belief that true expertise is not needed “to take up [this] important work”  Rather, it is about “changing the kind of attention we pay to our language practices, questioning the assumptions underlying our learned dispositions toward difference in language, and engaging in critical inquiry on alternative dispositions to take toward such differences in our writing and reading” (p. 313).  Although lacking expertise, I think I can pay attention to and question these things.  

In terms of more specific classroom applications, I might start by inviting students to explore and closely pay attention to their own relationships with language and language differences.  I wonder how student readers and writers might benefit from simply making explicit and reflecting on the linguistic resources they draw from, how and why they draw from them and their attitudes toward doing so.  To make visible the translingual approach in action, another idea suggested by Horner et al. involves allowing students to investigate “ostensibly homogenous” texts for “translingual activity” (p. 310).  Similarly, Horner and Zhan-Lu described examining differences among seemingly standard or canonical texts across different periods of time.  I’m starting to think that all texts reveal translingual activity.  We just have to look at them in a different way, invite students to do so, and explore the connections between such activity and our own use of language.  

I’m also curious to investigate how corpus tools might contribute toward building translingual awareness among students. The translingual approach emphasises teaching standards, but building awareness that standards are negotiable, historical and changeable.  A simple COCA search reveals examples of how a phrase is used and has changed over time, as well as clear visuals depicting changes in frequency of the phrase in different time periods.  A full investigation of the connection between applied corpus linguistics and a translingual approach probably requires a lot more time and many additional blogs, but it’s something I’m curious to look into.

There’s a lot more to read about the translingual approach, but I look forward to investigating these ideas more, and having them in mind the next time I’m in front of a class of multilingual students (and all students are).  I obviously haven’t yet figured out exactly how to change my teaching in order to fully honor this approach.  I think in a way though, a lot of it simply involves promoting awareness of the fact that this is how language works, and allowing students to develop such awareness themselves so that they can become more linguistically resourceful and “fluent in working across languages.”  

Blog 6

Horner, B., & Trimbur, J. (2002). English only and US college composition. College   Composition and Communication, 594-630.

In an article which called for the adoption of more internationalist, multilingual stances toward the teaching of written English, Horner and Trimbur (2002) examined the historical development of the modern college curriculum in relation to a cultural logic of monolingualism and the debate over English Only legislation.  The writers argued that the exclusive teaching of English in college composition contexts was felt to be inevitable, and therefore unidirectional, monolingualist perspectives remained dangerously unexamined and profoundly influential on teaching, writing programs, and culture within the United States.  While questioning this inevitability, the writers identified a lack of connection within composition studies between the identity of the field and languages other than English.  Since my topic explores second language learners and the idea of students drawing upon first language (L1) as a resource while reading in college contexts, I find it worthwhile to review an article which analyzed the history, strategic beliefs and legislation leading to strict monolingual perspectives toward postsecondary reading and writing.  Furthermore, I believe that when considered alongside empirical studies which reveal positive impacts of the use of L1 while reading L2 texts (Seng & Idris, 2006; Kamhi-Stein, 2003), an understanding of this history and its implications might inform pedagogical choices which allow and empower students to purposefully use their own linguistic resources.

Horner and Trimbur argued that in their debates compositionists often focus on a history of the field which neglects the examination of how monolingualism has come to be the norm.  They explained that "the final defeat of the ancients by the moderns institutionalized not only a required first-year course in written English, but also a language policy that replaced the bilingualism...of the classical curriculum with a unidirectional monolingualism" (p. 595).  "The moderns" were those who, in the mid-nineteenth century, called for the abolishment of Greek and Latin requirements in the curriculum, causing a shift in thought about the cultural, mental and literary value of studying classic languages.  Oratorical traditions which focused on recitation and translation of classic languages were criticized as useless in helping students learn to write in English.  This ultimately led to the separation of other languages from English,  writing instruction which was carried out only in English, and consequently, the implicit bilingualism of the curriculum was replaced with an entirely monolingual approach.

To further defend their perspective on the history of composition in relation to how we currently think about language, Horner and Trimbur identified four strategic beliefs which were generated between 1883 and 1902, giving form to the modern curriculum, while assigning roles to English in relation to other languages.  First, the study of modern languages was seen to be less intellectually demanding than the study of Latin or Greek.  Modern languages, furthermore, were presented as texts, separate from the vernacular.  Additionally, other languages were viewed as "linguistic antecedents to English" which lacked usefulness when not viewed in relation to the mother tongue (p. 605), and finally, there was an attitude of a monolingual United States versus other multilingual nations.  This led to a view of other languages as alien, and a language policy which "purifies the social identity of U.S. Americans as English speakers, privileges the use of language as written English, and then charts the pedagogical and curricular development of language as one that points inexorably toward mastery of written English" (p. 607).  The inevitable privileging of English is what Horner and Trimbur challenge us to question.

The task, then, which the authors presented, was to reveal how turn-of-the-century assumptions about language "have become sedimented in the way we think about writing pedagogy and curriculum" (p. 608).  Such assumptions, they argued, ran parallel to English only legislation debates and attitudes toward basic and ESL writers, who are often viewed as foreign to the university, threatening, or not deserving to be there.  These students are often categorized unnecessarily (as non-native, international, etc.) and the language they produce is seen as fixed.  Horner and Trimbur asserted that contrary to commonly held linguistic beliefs, boundaries between one language and the next are actually hazy, difficult to define, or might not exist at all.  We as readers are thereby challenged to think differently about language, the way we identify our students, the meaning of academic work and "how writing programs can encourage writing in languages other than English" (p. 622).  As Horner and Trimbur argued, what seems natural and inevitable (e.g. monolingual, English-only composition classrooms), is in fact historical and subject to change.  This is what makes the historical development they describe and the article itself so significant.  By understanding what has led to such overarching monolingualist perspectives in college composition contexts, we are enabled to question these perspectives, realizing that some aspects of the bilinguialist perspectives we abandoned over a century ago might better serve a linguistically diverse student body.

Horner and Trimbur were not calling for a return to oral recitations or the translation exercises of the past.  Rather, they provoked us as readers to consider and possibly alter the way we think about relationships between languages and the inevitability of monolingual, English-only college writing classrooms.  We are presented with a compelling challenge to adopt more internationalist perspectives toward the way we view the teaching of composition.  In light of the detailed historical account provided by the authors, which explained how our current policies have formed, it is difficult not to want to accept this challenge, and rethink the inevitability of English-only classroom practices.

In relation to the idea of language as a resource, or more specifically, the topic I'm exploring which involves the use of L1 in L2 reading, Horner and Trimbur provided partial insight into why some classrooms remain so monolingual in spite of multilingual student populations.  Although more theoretical background in Second Language Acquisition along with results of empirical studies might further inform possible reasons against as well as affective consequences of shunning L1 from the classroom, an overview of the evolution of the curriculum leading to unidirectional monolingualism helps me to understand why languages other than English are not always welcome in the classroom.  This understanding leads to questioning, and new perspectives on the possibility of actually promoting the use of L1 in the teaching of English reading and writing.  If L1 is more widely accepted and turned to, I wonder if more students might be encouraged to view language as a resource and also as a right.

References

Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (2003). Reading in two languages: How attitudes toward home  language and beliefs about reading affect the behaviors of “underprepared” L2  college readers. TESOL Quarterly, 37(1), 35-71.

Seng, G. H., & Hashim, F. (2006). Use of L1 in L2 reading comprehension among  tertiary ESL learners. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18(1), 29-54

Language as a Resource

In my last blog post, I talked about the (broad) topic of underprepared second language readers in relation to an article by Kamhi-Stein (in Teaching Developmental Reading).  At this point, I’m interested in focusing my topic on second language readers and attitudes toward the use of L1 in a college reading classroom.  I’m not sure if this can be expanded a little (or a lot) to include attitudes toward both L1 and home dialect, and I wonder if this is going to take me back to the original question I asked in my first blog post about definitions of literacy.  For now though, (at the risk of being too TESOL- specific) I want to start with another article by Kamhi-Stein (2003), from my reading list, which looks at attitudes toward a students “home language” and the idea of L1 as a resource for underprepared second language readers in a college classroom.  

The idea of L1 as a resource unfortunately contradicts attitudes and beliefs I’ve seen in many ESL classrooms, where L1 is often forbidden (as dramatic as that sounds) or seen as something students should be ashamed to turn to as a resource. Many practices I’ve witnessed (and possibly participated in myself) seem to create an idea that students should feel guilty about using their first language in any way, and almost result in generating some sort of adversity between a student’s L1 and English.  As an example, at a private language school I used to work for, which consisted many pre-academic ESL students, anyone overheard speaking their first language in the hallways between classes was issued a “grammar ticket.” This meant they had to sit down and complete an English grammar worksheet before returning to class.  While the intention was for this (strange punishment) to be a fun way to encourage students to speak English, I wonder about negative affective results in terms of how students might feel about their L1, especially when L1 is needed as a resource while reading.  

It seems as though students who have experienced this type of educational context prior to entering college do feel the need to hide the use of their first language in a classroom (I saw this in a CMS reading class I TA-ed for last semester).  This is why I feel it’s worth exploring cross-lingual use of reading strategies and the idea that L1 might (and should?) actually be viewed as a useful tool in a college reading context.  

It’s interesting to look at various views of L1 as problematic or helpful.  Ruiz (as cited in Kamhi-Stein, 2003) “identified three orientations toward language planning: language as problem, language as right, and language as resource” (p. 39).  Other studies determined that successful bilingual readers saw their L1s as a resource, while less successful readers saw home language as problematic and confusing (Jinenez, as cited in Kamhi-Stein, 2003).  This article investigates affective factors related to reading, and explores the relationship between four “underprepared” college readers’ attitudes toward home language, beliefs about reading, and cross-lingual reading processes.  The researcher discovered, through interviews, think-aloud tasks, and comprehension measures, that the readers who viewed L1 as a resource used cross-lingual strategies, which lead to more success in reading.  Readers who viewed home language as a problem, however, were not aware of such strategies, and were deemed “less successful” as college readers.  

Students are frequently told (in certain ESL contexts) to “think in English”, but the readers in Kamhi-Stein’s (2003) study found more success when using purposeful mental translation strategies.  I'm interested in the idea of building students’ awareness of how a home language might be viewed as a resource, rather than a problem, and of how cross-lingual strategies might lead to more success in reading, especially since the concept contradicts many pedagogical practices I've seen in play....