Brooks, E; (2022) Translanguaging and the shifting sands of language education. ELT Journal , Article ccab062. 10.1093/elt/ccab062. (In press).

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Abstract

It will have been almost impossible for anyone working in the field of language teaching to have avoided encountering the term translanguaging. Over the past decade, it has become one of the most influential concepts in the field of applied and sociolinguistics: indeed, I include myself in the growing number of academics, researchers, and teachers engaging with its pedagogy, theory, and/or associated practice (see, for example, García and Li 2014; Li 2018; Baynham and Lee 2019). With a proliferation of publications, papers, and workshops all pointing to a wide range of implications for language policy, educational reform, and classroom practice, grappling with what translanguaging is (or isn’t) and the extent to which this concept/approach can meet some of the more (occasionally) evangelical claims must indeed be a publisher’s dream. But what exactly is translanguaging and what is its relevance for language teaching and learning? Before introducing and discussing the five books under review, I begin first with a brief introduction to translanguaging, a reflection on the pedagogic advantages it is said to bring and some of the criticisms with which the concept has been met. Following this, I then touch on the potential institutional, structural, commercial, and personal tensions that adopting a translanguaging pedagogy may provoke and—given its orientation to social justice and linguistic equity—its relationship to ‘transformation’.

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