by James Hartley
I am a teacher at a large, private secondary school in Madrid. At a recent parents’ evening, I was asked, “But you don’t use Spanish in the classroom, do you?” I lied and said I didn’t, when in fact, I knew I did and do. I use translanguaging, to use the broadest term for switching languages, as part of my practice because I have intuitively come to think it is useful.
At the time of the exchange, I was ignorant of any academic work on the subject and, indeed, the term itself. The exchange made me realise that for the parent talking to me, using Spanish in an EFL classroom would seem counter-intuitive and, most likely, counter-productive - while I thought the opposite, without being able to say precisely why. I didn’t like the situation that put me in.
In my day-to-day teaching, translanguaging – also called code switching or code changing - might, with younger or weaker learners, be something as simple as the translation of a difficult or obscure lexical item (the name of a tree or fish, for example) or comparing social etiquette in formal and informal letter writing (clarifying why ‘love’ at the end of a letter differs from ‘I love you’), while with older or more advanced learners it might be more lesson-based, such as explaining idioms (comparing them with similar examples in their language) or clarifying complex grammar. Translanguaging, then, I find useful for scaffolding concepts, clarifying misunderstandings, and saving classroom time.
Schweers (1999) describes a “conviction” he had that the first language (L1) “has a necessary and facilitating role in the second and foreign language (L2) classroom” despite the position seeming “heretical in light of what most of us were taught when trained as ESL professionals”. This statement, twenty-five years old, could be true of most ESL/EFL teachers today, especially in private and international schools. Despite there being much research which suggests that Schweers’ conviction represents good practice, questions must be asked about why translanguaging is not more widely accepted, taught, and implemented in EFL classrooms.
Why is there no clear method written and published by educators and why does it remain a ‘secret’? Might it be that, despite scattered evidence to the contrary, translanguaging could actually be bad practice? I decided to investigate.
Recent research seems to suggest that although teachers are comfortable with the idea of translanguaging - a term coined by Cen Williams from the Welsh word trawsieithu, meaning to switch between Welsh and English in language classes - they are wary of frequently employing the practice “due to the expectations of their institutions, colleagues and parents of their students” (Yuvayapan, 2019). This tallied with my own experience, and of many colleagues who were told not to use any language other than English in their lessons - on the understanding that their lessons could only be truly ‘immersive’ if there was never recourse to the students’ L1.
Since I first started teaching English in Spain, I have been told by small school owners and my own students, and on many training courses for many schools and private ‘methods’, that I should pretend not to speak any Spanish and certainly not engage my students in Spanish. Deception, it was made clear, was vitally important to the correct learning of English. Deception and a lack of transparency, it seems to me, is at the core of the issue of translanguaging.
Reactions from colleagues when talking about the exchange with the parent were not as positive as I expected, largely, I believe, because of the ambiguity teachers feel towards the subject. Translanguaging is seen as a fact of life, but not something to be studied, defined, and discussed with school leaders and parents, or even between teachers. It just happens. You might even call it a dirty secret.
Students' reactions to translanguaging between English and Spanish were recently studied by Ferreira and Canese (2023) who concluded that translanguaging helps in understanding new vocabulary, in explaining grammar, and clarifying concepts, but that students acknowledged that one of the main drawbacks was “dominant language overuse”.
This tends to confirm the advice I was often given by Spanish parents the first time I was going to teach their children: “Pretend you don’t speak Spanish otherwise they’ll talk to you in Spanish all the time”. Though translanguaging has become a necessary part of the teacher’s method, it is worrying that, as Karabassova and San Isidro conclude after a 2023 literature review, “there appear to be no specific identifiable teaching strategies across classroom settings to make translanguaging generalisable in a pedagogical way”.
Online there is no dearth of information on translanguaging (over a million results on Google, over thirty thousand on Google Scholar, with many short articles on educational websites as of July 2024). The problem seems to be one of awareness among teachers of best practice, and the dissemination of the benefits of translanguaging in EFL teaching among school leaders and parents. We need good books on the subject, written by reputable academics and educational leaders.
For example, if a student’s behaviour in a young learner’s class is proving unacceptable, is it beneficial to ask the student to be quiet and to listen in L1 instead of English? If the command is short and understandable in English, using L1 would deprive the student of meaningful English input - which is the whole point of the lesson. But if the student is disinclined to listen to the teacher when they are speaking English, would the use of L1 shake them up sufficiently to effect a change in behaviour? For me, it is not enough to go by instinct - I need to know what the research says to make an informed decision, and if that research already exists, I haven’t found it, and I haven’t read about it in any of the numerous EFL resource books for teachers that I have read in the last few years.
There is a wealth of anecdotal information out there. I have read teaching blogs that talk about successes with translanguaging, with teachers claiming it makes their classes more efficient and that they find it easier to relate to their students when the teacher’s knowledge of the L1 is revealed. It seems that, when used sparingly, translanguaging can be effective, and there are even wider socio-political contexts in which it might be applied, such as in decolonising language. Many English textbooks are Anglo-centred and re-setting exercises in these books in local contexts can often stimulate learner’s interest, making the exercises and texts more applicable to their own contexts.
Balancing this out, though, is the warning that learners will expect a teacher they know to be fluent in both the language being taught and the language being learned to translate and help them in their own languages. This is obviously detrimental in many areas, not least of which is reading and understanding for gist, or finding new ways of saying or asking about something which the learner does not know. And that’s before we even consider what it would mean for recruitment in the EFL industry. As Marco Faldetta discusses in another article in this Issue of the Journal, many EFL teachers work in a country that is not their own, and might not know anything of the L1. If students come to expect their teachers to have a high degree of knowledge of their own L1, what will happen when a new teacher arrives who legitimately cannot speak a word, and the previous teacher’s translanguaging habits become a thing of the past?
To conclude, I learned a great deal from the situation on my parents’ evening. I learned that a lot of information on translanguaging is available. I learned that the situation at my school is common and typical of many institutions, and that the perceptions of my school leaders and fellow teachers are too. I also learned that a lack of transparency helps nobody in this situation and that open communication and an honest addressing of the subject is a far better option than maintaining the existing culture of hiding the truth.
References
Ferreira, C.A.S. and Canese, V., 2023. Translanguaging Between English and Spanish and Positive Identities in the Spanish as a Second Language Classroom at a Private School in Asunción. Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe, 35(3), pp.41-66.
Karabassova, L. and San Isidro, X., 2023. Towards translanguaging in CLIL: A study on teachers’ perceptions and practices in Kazakhstan. International Journal of Multilingualism, 20(2), pp.556-575.
Schweers Jr, W., 1999. "Using L1 in the L2 classroom." English teaching forum. Vol. 37. No. 2.
Yuvayapan, F., 2019. "Translanguaging in EFL classrooms: Teachers’ perceptions and practices." Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 15.2: 678-694.
Author Biography
James Hartley is an English teacher who lives and works in Madrid, Spain. He is the author of the Shakespeare's Moon series of books for GCSE students and the Cognate Readers series of graded readers for non-native English speakers. He is an Associate Editor at Tint Journal and the Editor of The Madrid Review.