Translanguaging as a spontaneous online language learning strategy in an age of (im)mobility

Abstract

This article starts from the premise that contemporary language education must engage with the realities of language use in a world characterised by mobility across boundaries and increasingly complex senses of belonging. The positive implications of translanguaging for learning experiences and engagement are already widely accepted. However, little attention has been paid to systematically capturing the language learning-oriented functions associated with this multilingual practice. Drawing on learners’ written posts on the discussion forums within a mass-scale online German language course, we propose an emerging typology of language learning-oriented translanguaging functions. Our in-depth interactional analysis uncovers three ways in which adult learners use translanguaging for both self-directed and other-directed language learning purposes: (1) in acts of bricolage, in which learners draw strategically on their full communicative repertoires to compensate for a lack of appropriate resources in the target language; (2) in the form of language play, in which they creatively manipulate the boundaries between the languages in their repertoires; and (3) to enable peer teaching and learning. In so doing, we highlight the hitherto unexplored translanguaging strategy of covert bricolage (by which learners draw on their awareness of the conventions and structures of one language to produce another) and document the key role of translanguaging in the provision of corrective feedback. We conclude by calling for language educators to create opportunities for authentic, cooperative multilingual learner communication that can contribute to language learning gains, while mirroring that which learners will encounter in a world characterised by borders, (im)mobility and diversity.