This presentation offers an innovative methodological and pedagogical approach to translanguaging developed with TESOL student-teachers. Building on metaphor theory and analysis, the presenters will share practical ideas on how to help student-teachers develop new metaphors for their teaching classroom practices and language ideologies in line with a translingual approach.
This presentation begins with a focus on how student-teachers engage with a translingual orientation to language teaching and practice. Ten participants were introduced to principles of translanguaging in a TESOL programme at a Scottish University. They reflected on how they conceptualize their language experiences and ideologies and shared their language practices over a period of one year. Although research indicates that translanguaging is ‘unremarkable’ (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015) and ‘ordinary’ (Dovchin, 2017), the presenters wanted to find out whether students’ experiences are in line with such principles, and if they are open to embrace, conceptually and practically, a translingual orientation in their subsequent pedagogical orientations. The innovation of this presentation lies in its theoretical and analytical approach. We draw upon translanguaging (García and Wei, 2014) and cognitive linguistics (Cameron and Gibb, 2008), theories rarely discussed together. Building on metaphor theory and analysis, the presentation will share the metaphors that demonstrate student-teachers’ conceptualizations of their language ideologies and practices (e.g., ‘languages as liquid’ vs. ‘languages as tool’). The metaphors are derived from student interviews, assignments, mapping exercises and a What’s App group. Based on our participants’ conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), we were able to uncover the challenges student-teachers face in making sense of translanguaging as a viable pedagogical approach for their future teaching contexts. The decision of acting under a specific language orientation is determined by a variety of metaphors that guide and restrict students’ actions. The newness of metaphors associated with a translingual approach explains, to some extent, our participants’ reserved attitudes to this approach. For this reason, we have developed an innovative metaphor-based pedagogical approach to raise our student-teachers’ awareness of the metaphors that guide their actions, to facilitate risk-taking by embracing new metaphors, and to explore the implications of the new metaphors for classroom practice.
