A qualitative analysis of teachers´ reasons for translanguaging

Iratxe Serna-Bermejo

doi:10.30827/portalin.vi43.30561

Authors

Iratxe Serna-Bermejo University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6344-4897

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30827/portalin.vi43.30561

Keywords:

translanguaging, multilingualism, bilingualism, university, EMI

Agencies: This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant PID2020-117882GB-I00.

Abstract

English Medium Instruction (EMI) is spreading at a rapid pace in universities the world over. At a time when internationalisation has become a key objective in higher education, EMI programmes are regarded as a pillar of the measures implemented to achieve it. The present study was conducted at the University of (anonymous), an institution that has two official languages (Basque and Spanish), which is why EMI entails the use of English as L3. This linguistic milieu makes it an ideal multilingual context to analyse translanguaging. Translanguaging has become a very relevant and, to a certain extent, controversial issue, especially in those contexts where the language teaching tradition encourages the exclusion of the L1 from the foreign language classroom, as is the case at the UPV/EHU. Our objective is to identify teachers´ reasons or motives to translanguage both in the EMI and the BMI (Basque Medium Instruction). We identified six objectives for these teachers to translanguage: (i) Providing a translation; (ii) The influence of Spanish on Basque: the use of Spanish expressions; (iii) Translanguaging to attract students´ attention; (iv) Translanguaging as a criticism; (v) Linguistic cleanliness and purism; (vi) Translanguaging in relation to the local culture and context.

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Author Biography

Iratxe Serna-Bermejo, University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

Iratxe Serna-Bermejo holds a PhD in the Language Acquisition in Multilingual Settings programme at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain. She is currently teaching at the Faculty of Education at the UPV/EHU in the Department of Didactics of Language and Literature. She has published in international journals (International Journal of Multilingualism; International Journal of Applied Linguistics etc.) and editorials. Iratxe has done a research stay at the University of Auckland (New Zealand). Her research interests centre on EMI at university, translanguaging, classroom interaction, multilingualism, language attitudes and motivation.

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FUNDING INFORMATION:

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant PID2020-117882GB-I00.