Translanguaging in a collaborative summary writing task among university students of immigrant background

One of the consequences of immigrant achievement gap in Europe is an underrepresentation of first- and second-generation immigrant students in tertiary education (OECD, 2018). Those who do enter university still encounter difficulties with the academic language, often in spite of an extensive education in the target language (Van Avermaet et al., 2018). In Italy, this phenomenon has recently been observed within the mandatory initial language evaluation tests carried out at the beginning of the first year of BA (Duso, 2017, Grassi, 2017). As many studies have shown that remedial programs in the target language do not solve the problem, the aim of my research is to ascertain the effectiveness of encouraging translanguaging in a collaborative summary writing task - both in academic language proficiency and in academic content learning. This goal will be reached by analyzing the participants’ production when encouraged to translanguage compared to their production when encouraged to only use the target language. Spoken interaction during both tasks will also be analyzed, in order to identify, from the ground up, strategies and tools which could be implemented in support of plurilingual students in higher education. Duso, E.M., (2017). Studenti stranieri all’università: hanno davvero pari opportunità? In L’italiano dei nuovi italiani Atti del XIX Convegno Nazionale GISCEL (Siena, 7-9 aprile 2016). Roma: Aracne, 307-326. OECD (2018) Education at a glance: OECD indicators. OECD publishing, Paris. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2018_eag-2018-en Grassi, R. (2017) Internazionalizzazione dell’internazionalità. Azioni a supporto delle matricole ‘straniere’ nei corsi accademici in italiano. In La didattica delle lingue nel nuovo millennio: le sfide dell’internazionalizzazione. Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia Van Avermaet, P., Slembrouck, S., Van Gorp, K., Sierens, S., & Maryns, K. (Eds.). (2018). The multilingual edge of education. Palgrave Macmillan.