Developing translingual competence and awareness in a study abroad Spanish language classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent research highlights how agentive capacities for complex meaning-making can be developed among language learners during study abroad (SA) (e.g. Diao and Trentman 2021. Language Learning in Study Abroad: The Multilingual Turn. Multilingual Matters). In this regard, we focus on students’ translingual development, or their emerging capacity to communicate across sociopolitically-constructed linguistic and cultural borders (Canagarajah 2013b), during a 12-week program for U.S.-university students in Guatemala. Drawing on ethnographic data, particularly audio-recordings from a small, intermediate-level, second language (L2) Spanish class, we compare classroom interactions from the beginning and the end of students’ sojourn. Our qualitative findings demonstrate participants’ increasing utilisation of diverse semiotic strategies – along with linguistic resources associated with multiple languages and varieties – to make meaning and further their Spanish learning. In so doing, students and their instructor transformed their classroom into a translanguaging space where their full linguistic repertoires and identities were activated and encouraged (Wei 2018. “Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language.” Applied Linguistics 39: 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx039). We further note students’ translingual development in their emerging ability to engage in transcultural reflection and communication as time progressed. As such, this paper argues for the promotion of translingual development in SA and L2 pedagogies.