Based on my doctoral research project investigating translanguaging practices in the primary school, this paper focusses on how a Portuguese-speaking newcomer to the trilingual education system in Luxembourg orchestrates both multilingual and multimodal resources to navigate curricular demands and co-construct meaning.
Numerous scholars advocate for translanguaging pedagogies to increase learning opportunities for all students, including newly-arrived ones (e.g. García et al. 2012). Yet, research on the translanguaging practices of newcomers remains scarce. Newcomers to the education system in Luxembourg face an important challenge: they learn French, German and Luxembourgish during 40.5% of their curricular time. While my doctoral research explores the translanguaging practices of fourth-graders of different language and education backgrounds, this paper investigates how Portuguese-speaking newcomer Harry deploys his semiotic repertoire to co-construct meaning in class. Data stem from twenty-one days of observation and six hours of video-recordings which were analysed by means of sociocultural discourse analysis and multimodal interaction analysis. Findings show that Harry combined multilingual and multimodal resources to interpret curricular content. He spoke up to five languages, including his home language; drew on non-linguistic resources – both vocal (e.g. sound effects) and non-vocal (e.g. gestures) ones – and shifted modalities (e.g. singing). This complex use of resources was connected to the translanguaging practices of his teacher and peers. The study provides insights into the ways in which newcomers deploy multiple meaning-making resources to access curricular content, and has practical implications for teacher education in that it raises primary school teachers' awareness of the relevance of the pupils' semiotic repertoires during meaning-making processes. García, O., Flores, N., & Woodley, H. M. (2012). Transgressing monolingualism and bilingual dualities: translanguaging pedagogies. In A. Yiakoumetti (Ed.), Harnessing linguistic variation to improve education (pp. 45-75). Bern: Peter Lang AG.MENEJ. (2018). Accueillir et intégrer - Guide pédagogique de l'école fondamentale. Luxembourg: MENFP.
