“I Use Half Nepali, Half English, The Hybrid Language!” – Translanguaging For Pedagogy In A Nepali Literacy Class

Abstract

This paper will discuss the pragmatic use of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice within a Nepali literacy class setting. Translanguaging, a term first used in Wales in the 1980’s by Williams and Baker to describe a pedagogical practice for teaching two languages together (Lewis et al., 2012), has developed to describe a process in which both languages are used in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organise and mediate mental processes in understanding, speaking, literacy, and, not least, learning. Translanguaging concerns... function rather than form, cognitive activity, as well as language production
(Lewis et al., 2012: 641).

Translanguaging therefore, as a ‘flexible bilingual pedagogy’ (Blackledge and Creese, 2010), has been seen to offer ‘learners the possibility of accessing academic content with the semiotic resources they bring, while acquiring new ones’ (Garcia and Wei, 2014: 66).

Translanguaging is identified by the Nepalese teacher in this study as a valuable tool in her pedagogical toolkit.

The example of translanguaging discussed in this paper is taken from ethnographic data gathered over one academic year as part of a PhD study of multilingual literacy learning of Nepalese children growing up in the UK. Participants are Nepalese Nepali speaking children and their teacher.