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Classroom Interactions in Hong Kong English Medium Instruction Secondary Classrooms: A Translanguaging View

By emma.brooks, on 26 October 2021

Dr Kevin Tai, UCL Institute of Education

Translanguaging as a theory of language underscores individuals’ agentive use of multiple linguistic and non-linguistic resources to construct and communicate meaning (Li Wei, 2018; Tai and Li Wei, 2020; 2021a; 2021b; 2021c), highlighting language as one among many semiotic resources in one integrated communicative repertoire. Translanguaging seeks to break the boundaries between different named languages and also between different modalities and across language scripts and writing systems. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research to date that examines the details of how translanguaging is practised in English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classrooms where English-as-a-Second-Language students are expected to learn all/some subjects through English only. This seminar aims to present the sequential organisation of translanguaging practices in content classrooms in order to reveal how translanguaging practices is enacted in EMI classrooms. A quick overview of translanguaging as a theoretical framework and the unique combination of Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a methodological framework will be explained. Examples drawn from a 2-week linguistic ethnographic investigation in a Hong Kong EMI secondary mathematics classroom will be explored.