Translanguaging… or trans-foreign-languaging?

Abstract

Amidst the demand for multilingual pedagogies that advocate the use of the first language (L1) in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), this article first investigates the concept of translanguaging as a possible panacea. Translanguaging mainly refers to natural multilingual practices of speakers with multicompetences beyond their dominant language. However, doubts need to be expressed as to whether students without adequate language resources in the foreign language (FL) (henceforth referred to also as L2 intercheangeably) can fully enjoy all the benefits of translanguaging. Thus, the concept of translanguaging was adapted into trans-foreign-languaging (Trans-FL), making its distinctness available for CLIL. During an interventionalist study carried out in a 10th grade CLIL Politics & Economics classroom, where the students’ L2 is English and German, the official school language, is L1, three different models of Trans-FL were designed together with the students as main stakeholders, using triangulated data. The genesis of the three models was reconstructed as thick description in the Appendix, elucidating different intensities of dynamic bilingualism within a natural classroom ecology. Finally, the models were incorporated into one single and comprehensive CLIL teaching model for an affordance-based and differentiated approach that recognizes the needs of various student types. The result is a tangible pedagogy that integrates L1 use into various CLIL contexts as a norm.