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Article published In:
Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts
Vol. 8:2 (2022) ► pp.143–185

Translanguaging… or trans-foreign-languaging?

A comprehensive Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teaching model with judicious and principled L1 use

| Goethe University Frankfurt

Amidst the demand for multilingual pedagogies that advocate the use of the first language (L1) in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), this article first investigates the concept of translanguaging as a possible panacea. Translanguaging mainly refers to natural multilingual practices of speakers with multicompetences beyond their dominant language. However, doubts need to be expressed as to whether students without adequate language resources in the foreign language (FL) (henceforth referred to also as L2 intercheangeably) can fully enjoy all the benefits of translanguaging. Thus, the concept of translanguaging was adapted into trans-foreign-languaging (Trans-FL), making its distinctness available for CLIL. During an interventionalist study carried out in a 10th grade CLIL Politics & Economics classroom, where the students’ L2 is English and German, the official school language, is L1, three different models of Trans-FL were designed together with the students as main stakeholders, using triangulated data. The genesis of the three models was reconstructed as thick description in the Appendix, elucidating different intensities of dynamic bilingualism within a natural classroom ecology. Finally, the models were incorporated into one single and comprehensive CLIL teaching model for an affordance-based and differentiated approach that recognizes the needs of various student types. The result is a tangible pedagogy that integrates L1 use into various CLIL contexts as a norm.

Keywords: CLIL, translanguaging, trans-foreign-languaging, bilingual dynamism, thick description
Article outline
  • 1.How do I say this in my native language?!?
  • 2.L1 use in CLIL? Moving to the avant-garde of translanguaging
    • 2.1Limits of translanguaging for CLIL: Proposing research for a multilingual approach
    • 2.2Trans-foreign-languaging: Applying translanguaging to CLIL
  • 3.Empirical research: A judicious and principled L1 use in CLIL classrooms
    • 3.1Research method
    • 3.2The research context
      • 3.2.1The school and its CLIL program
      • 3.2.2Information about the research group, student types learning arrangements
      • 3.2.3Curricular provisions and content taught
    • 3.3Research design
      • 3.3.1Information on models investigated
      • 3.3.2Data
  • 4.Research proceedings and results
    • 4.1Results of the presurvey
    • 4.2Analysis and planning of the first DBAR cycle
    • 4.3Final survey: Student evaluation of the three Trans-FL methods
  • 5.Discussion and presentation of a comprehensive CLIL teaching model
    • 5.1Focus on different student types
    • 5.2The teacher
      • 5.2.1First engineering, then managing, finally observing
      • 5.2.2Teacher’s language use: L2
    • 5.3Exemplary adaptation of the model
      • 5.3.1Various forms of differentiation
      • 5.3.2Further possible variations: What about ‘natural multilingualism’… randomization…?
    • 5.4Limitations of the research
  • 6.Looking back, but moving forward: What has to happen next?
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00087.nij
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