Examining the attitudes towards translanguaging and language positions of pre-service English language teachers

Abstract

The implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in the Philippines compelled education stakeholders to integrate translanguaging in teaching and learning. The sudden shift to a multilingual language learning framework proved to be challenging to both teachers and learners since education policy discourses continue to support monolingual classroom methodologies (Lin, 2013). However, little work has been done to investigate the attitudes of pre-service English language teachers (ELTs) in using translanguaging and the extent to which they are willing to accommodate other languages in their future second language (L2) classes. Thus, the present study explores the translanguaging attitudes and language positions of pre-service ELTs in a Philippine state university and compares their translanguaging attitudes and language positions by gender, year level, and academic performance. Data from 120 pre-service ELTs were gathered using the translanguaging attitudinal survey of Fang and Liu (2020) and the language positions survey questionnaire of Anderson and Lightfoot (2018). The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings revealed that the participants possess a positive view of translanguaging for content-oriented and classroom-oriented purposes. The majority of the participants also belong to the maximal position of Macaro’s (2001) continuum of perspective. There is also a significant difference between the participants’ translanguaging attitudes and language positions in relation to their year level. Overall, the results suggest a need for teacher education institutions (TEIs) to explicitly incorporate multilingual practices into their curriculum to increase the acceptance of using translanguaging in multilingual L2 classrooms