Translanguaging as a new trend in multilingual education

Abstract

Traditionally, teaching and learning languages have been carried out from a monolingual perspective. The past methods of the 20th century focused on the language itself instead of the learners and their needs. That is why the main objectives of this work are to conduct a theoretical overview of three pedagogical approaches, namely those of Communicative Language Teaching, Content and Language Integrated Learning, and Task-based Language Teaching, and recognise the need for new pedagogical methodologies according to the realities of the 21st century. For that, the three most eminent communicative methods up to the present have been reviewed However, nowadays globalization is a fact, so multilingual and multicultural populations are present in many countries. Therefore, more interest and attention to multilingual education and training programs arose. For this reason, multilingualism and translanguaging are proposed as new trends when learning languages. Translanguaging involves students’ learning of two languages through a process of deep cognitive bilingual engagement. When translanguaging, there are no clear-cut boundaries between the languages of bilinguals, but a languaging continuum that is accessed. Thus, trilinguals can act naturally, using one language to reinforce the other to raise understanding and also their activity in both languages. Certainly, a focus on multilingualism should be adopted when teaching from the translanguaging perspective. The study concludes that there is a lack of consideration of the background knowledge of learners because of not recognizing their multilingual nature in a more developed society. Consequently, teachers need more training in order to teach properly according to learners' necessities. However, there is room for more investigation and formation.