Translanguaging in the MTB-MLE Classroom: A Case of an Island School with Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Several studies on the development of translanguaging as a linguistic resource in a multilingual classroom have been done. The findings of the research imply that using translanguaging in English language teaching and learning is a useful method, especially in a classroom where English is taught as a second or foreign language. The primary goal of this research, on the other hand, is to look into the languages presented in an MTB-MLE as a subject and investigate the linguistic hybridity of the mother tongue used in the classroom as a language exercise, and find out the teacher’s perspectives on teaching a mother tongue (MT) subject to multilingual learners. As a result, this paper presents a case of a mother tongue-based-multilingual education (MTB-MLE) class and how the MT subject is taught in a single classroom with five different local languages represented as MTs. The corpus of the study draws from a Grade 1 MT classroom in an island municipality in the Philippines. The researcher was able to examine the linguistic hybridity of the MT as a language practiced by the children in the school using a translanguaging framework. Furthermore, through immersion, observation, and informal interviews, it was found that translanguaging is already an intrinsic component of the “actual” language that surrounds the children, both outside and inside the MT classroom. More importantly, the study revealed that in a translingual classroom, both the teacher and the learners have linguistic potential and language competency.