Tai, Kevin Wai Hin; (2021) Translanguaging in Hong Kong English Medium Instruction Classrooms: An Ethnomethodologically Informed Study of Classroom Interaction and Teachers’ Reflection. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Recent research on English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classroom interaction, where students learn the subject matter through L2 English, has examined the role of translanguaging in supporting classroom participants to exploit multilingual and multimodal resources to facilitate content teaching and learning. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research to date that examines the details of how translanguaging is practised in content learning classrooms. This study focuses on the sequential organisation of translanguaging practices in content classrooms and illuminates how EMI teachers create different translanguaging spaces through mobilising multiple languages and modalities in EMI mathematics and history classrooms in two secondary schools in Hong Kong. The data of this study consists of classroom observations with fieldnotes, ethnographic interviews with teachers and other stakeholders, classroom video recordings and video-stimulated-recall-interviews. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is carried out on the classroom interactional data, looking at not only different named languages but also spatial repertoire, the use of objects and other facilities in the classroom space. The analyses of the classroom interactional data are triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interview data which are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in order to analyse the teacher’s reflections on his pedagogical and interactional strategies. Findings reveal different translanguaging spaces that being created by the EMI teachers. These translanguaging spaces are constructed through 1) engaging in playful talk, 2) integrating the students’ everyday life knowledge into the learning space, 3) deploying the affordances of a technological device, 4) increasing student engagement for responding to diverse students’ needs and 5) engaging in co-learning between teacher and students. The construction of these translanguaging spaces requires the EMI teachers to utilise various linguistic, multimodal, spatial resources and their sociocultural and pedagogical knowledge. It is argued that an EMI classroom is an integrated translanguaging space which entails multiple translanguaging sub-spaces that afford teachers to draw on available resources in a coordinated performance in order to engage students in the learning process and promote equitable knowledge construction processes. The findings of this research reveal important implications for adopting a translanguaging perspective to studying classroom discourse and implications for EMI education and policymaking.

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