Between question and answer
Mother tongue tutoring and translanguaging as dialogic action
In Sweden, tutoring in the mother tongue is a form of special educational support to enable pupils with non-Swedish language
backgrounds to follow Swedish medium instruction and succeed at school. For pupils who risk failing to meet minimal curricular
requirements, it is an educational right. This study investigates tutor-mediated interaction with Somali newly arrived pupils and
subject teachers in oral examinations at the ninth year and asks how translanguaging may be relevant to speech performances in
this multilingual setting. Both tutors and pupils translanguage advantageously to accomplish pedagogical objectives.
Translanguaging proves subject to the personal aspirations of speakers, the organization of interaction as well as wider
pedagogical goals. Following Bakhtin, discrepancy between tutor translingual interpretation and the other participants’ interpreted
utterances is accounted for as the responsive engagement of a second consciousness that supplements other voices creatively.
Central aspects of translanguaging are challenged through a dialogic lens. The implications of treating translanguaging in mother
tongue tutoring as dialogic action include positioning translanguaging in an interactionist framework, the
importance of a discourse of constraint as well as affordance, a dynamic epistemology and the need for teachers and tutors to be
aware of the inherent meaning-making processes in translingual interpretation for pupil assessment.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Research context and aim
- 3.Background
- 3.1Bilingual education in Sweden
- 3.2The task of a tutor
- 3.3Educational continuity and testing
- 4.Translanguaging
- 5.Some Bakhtinian concepts
- 6.Methods and data analysis
- 7.Data analysis
- 7.1Tutor response and representation
- 7.2To translanguage or not to translanguage?
- 7.3Accounting for translanguaging and tutor representation
- 7.4Between question and answer
- 8.Discussion
- 8.1Translanguaging in tutoring
- 8.2Translanguaging through a dialogic lens
- 9.Conclusions
-
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Fernández, Amaia, Pilar Sagasta & Nagore Ipiña
2019.
Communicative Acts Used by Emergent Trilingual Pupils in English Classrooms in the Basque Autonomous Community.
Languages 4:3
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