Applying a Translingual Approach

After this week's reading, it occurred to me that although changing attitudes toward language instruction in a composition classroom is a battle that has to be waged on multiple fronts (i.e. against those opposed in university administration, in other departments, within our department, within our writing program, our students, ourselves), the move toward a translingual classroom is a logical reflection of our increasingly translingual society. It's a small example, but I was thinking about how my nephew, son of monolingual English L1 parents, already knows several words in Spanish due to limited exposure to Dora the Explorer. Though he's not quite school age, he may find himself in classes later on that will either encourage him to capitalize on that kernel of knowledge or not. The language he's learned and more obviously, the language learned by those growing up in multilingual environments where code switching is the norm, should not be disregarded. Horner et al. see a pedagogical approach that can integrate this knowledge as useful for all students. They state, "This approach insists on viewing language differences and fluidities as resources to be preserved, developed, and utilized. Rather than respond to language differences only in terms of rights, it sees them as resources" (304). It makes perfect sense that I should want, as a teacher, to utilize every possible advantage that I can to get students to write interesting, dynamic work. So if employing a translingual approach will broaden my students' ability to communicate, why not try it?

My next thought was that enacting this kind of language policy on the classroom level might involve reconceptualizing some of our extant notions about what constitutes formal writing and what doesn't. Specifically, I was struck by how the chart on page 647 in the Tardy article demonstrates a decrease in the percentage of teachers willing to include practices that integrate other languages relative to the "seriousness" or finality of the assignment. So it seems to me that when we label an assignment as "final paper", "formal writing", or "graded work" it carries with it a hierarchy that demands, at least according to most teachers, a use of Standard English. I wonder if inverting that very structure might be what gets students to write more creative, expressive work. For instance, if students are encouraged to use the Standard (whatever that means to us or them) while drafting, but are then encouraged to make the writing match their own voice in revision, maybe the resultant work will be more engaging or will at least suit the individual writing it. I suppose I’m feeling that maybe it’s not just the language that we allow or encourage our students to use that matters, but the way that we frame the writing that we require them to do.