Translanguaging in Language Teaching and Learning: Current Practices and Future Directions

Abstract

The field of applied linguistics and teaching English to speakers of other languages has experienced various reforms in relation to the ontology and epistemology of English language education. From the early debate challenging the dichotomy of native and non-native speakers of English (Liu, 1999) and the development of World Englishes (Kachru, 1992), to the more recent acceleration of Global Englishes language teaching (Rose and Galloway, 2019) and multimodal and translanguaging as a theory, method, or approach of language education (García and Li, 2014; Li, 2022; Li and García, 2022), it seems that English language education has witnessed more than a ‘multilingual turn’ (May, 2014); it is going through a critical ‘transera’ that recognizes both linguistic and cultural diversity, and views social, cultural, and multimodal resources as valuable assets in learning for inclusive education (Dovchin and Lee, 2019). The question still remains regarding whether such native-oriented, fixed, elusive, impossible but patronizing learning goals should respond to the new sociocultural and psychological considerations and diversity of the landscape of English language education. Given the complexity of how languages are used in various settings, it is essential that English be viewed as a global language, with multifaceted linguistic, cultural and multimodal practices. The very essentialist view of English language learning and teaching, which embodies the native-speakerism ideology, regards native-speaker ‘standard’