Three Principles of Translanguaging: A Resource for TWIN-CS

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Translanguaging was featured prominently at the 2018 Summer Academy when several breakout sessions and lunch meetings were offered to discuss research on the topic and ideas for incorporating translanguaging into instruction. A recent article in Language Magazine explores this concept further through the research of Dr. Laura Hamman, classroom teacher Emeline Beck, and educator Aubrey Donaldson. 

Their examination of common classrooms practices, a review of research on translanguaging, and a thorough reflection of their teaching has resulted in three recommendations for translanguaging principles:

Principle 1: Translanguaging pedagogies should be purposefully designed and implemented.
-focus on the lesson and the objectives of the instruction
-keep language flexible, but purposeful and strategic

Principle 2: Translanguaging pedagogies should promote interaction and inclusion, drawing upon what students know individually and collectively.
-drawing on the work of Vygotsky (1978), the authors argue that teachers need to consider the broad linguistic and experiential knowledge their emergent bilingual students may have, including the fact that they may be developing two, three or more languages simultaneously

Principle 3: Translanguaging pedagogies should enrich learning across all of the languages in a student’s repertoire.
-recognizing that the students may be learning much more than two langauges, the instruction should be supportive of the whole linguistic experience, so that they can become truly multilingual and multi-literate
“Translanguaging pedagogies can help to facilitate this transfer, activating the interdependency among a student’s different linguistic resources and enabling students to flexibly negotiate meaning and develop deeper metalinguistic knowledge.”

Read their entire article here, as great anecdotes and suggestions are shared. 

​-Mary Bridget Burns, Assistant Director 


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TWIN-CS

TWIN-CS advances the Catholic tradition of academic excellence by empowering Catholic schools to systematically transform from a monolingual to multilingual educational model in the service of vibrant culturally diverse populations.

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