Turkish EFL Instructors' Attitudes Towards Translanguaging Practices

Abstract

Translanguaging, valuing students’ whole linguistic resources in learning, plays a key role in bilingual/multilingual education. Studying pedagogical translanguaging, suggesting a systematic use of students’ native languages (L1) and target language (L2) interchangeably, has also become common in Foreign Language (FL) education in recent years. However, monolingualism, separating languages as L1 and L2, regards FL learners as two monolinguals rather than emergent bilinguals with a single linguistic repertoire. The existing literature shows translanguaging has been investigated in mostly bilingual/multilingual education and emphasizes a need in more research in FL settings especially into teachers’ beliefs. Since teachers’ beliefs are important in implementing pedagogies and Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students are also emergent bilinguals, translanguaging is worth being studied in Türkiye. Thus, this mixed methods study drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from a Likert scale questionnaire and written interview with Turkish EFL instructors at three state universities in Türkiye aimed to investigate their attitudes and practices regarding translanguaging. The findings indicated the translanguaging framework, promoting dynamic bilingualism in FL classrooms, was not widely acknowledged as a pedagogy, and spontaneous translanguaging practices were reported with a monolingual bias to mediate the L2 learning for low proficiency students. However, what is promising is that following a definition and examples, most participants were willing to use translanguaging pedagogy emphasising the role of the teacher and in- service training. In light of the findings, this study offers implications for all stakeholders in FL education for the potential of translanguaging as a pedagogy to be recognized.