Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted An investigation of English teachers’ perceptions and ideologies about translanguaging in secondary English as a Foreign Language classrooms in Saudi Arabia(University of London, 2022-11-01) Alshamari, Ghaida; Cogo, AlessiaDue to the new situation of multilingualism that has developed over recent decades, there are new trends in the study of bi/multilingualism. Such trends reflect a reaction against traditional approaches to teaching languages, which refer to a monolingual ideal speaker who isolates the target language. The advancements in understanding of multilingual communication have consolidated academic concern around the concept of translanguaging, recognising multilingualism in its own terms and understanding its value. This research project examines EFL teachers’ translanguaging perceptions and how their perceptions fit into language policy and ideologies in their secondary English classrooms in the Saudi context. A study was conducted with 3 semi-structured interviews and 105 teachers completed the questionnaire. The findings show that, in practice, teachers translanguage despite reporting minimal mixing of languages in classrooms due to ideological tensions. Teachers show that their students’ behaviours in the classroom motivate them to adopt translanguaging to a degree. Further, deeper knowledge cannot be reached without using all the linguistic repertoire. The study additionally reveals that English teachers lack awareness of fully using their bi/multilingual competence. From their perspective, maintaining a balance in recruitment in linguistic recourses are more crucial.23 0Item Restricted Enabling Translanguaging in the Saudi EFL Classroom: Affordances and Reflections of Collaborative Translanguaging Tasks During Reading Lessons(Saudi Digital Library, 2023) Ghali, Nada; Smith, Heather; Lopez, ElaineTranslanguaging advocates a new approach to the teaching and learning of multilinguals based on the idea that multilingual learners have one linguistic repertoire, rather than moving between two or more language codes (García and Li, 2014). In the EFL classroom, however, the tendency to use the target language only is still advocated as a pedagogy in education policy. In observations before this study and as a teacher in the context of Saudi Arabia, learners still used Arabic during group discussions in the EFL classroom. This study attempts to allow learners to draw on their full linguistic repertoire in a safe space to reconstitute their languaging processes for learning English during collaborative reading lessons. This study positions translanguaging as collaborative and agentive, viewing learning through a sociocultural framework (Vygotsky, 1978; Mercer, 1995; 2002) In this qualitative study, group observations were conducted to observe translanguaging affordances of learning in two cases of different proficiency level groups of students. Students collectively reflected on their weekly learning and were interviewed and provided a structured written reflection at the end of the seven weeks of translanguaging as allowed in the classroom. The study found that students reflected particularly on awareness of their metalinguistic development as they showed creative ways to mediate their learning in the bilingual ZPD (Moll, 2014). Ultimately, students made their translanguaging purposeful through the active processes of interthinking, thus suggesting new mechanisms for how interthinking functions through translanguaging in the collaborative learning classroom. This research has extended the scope of applying sociocultural and translanguaging theory together to provide empirical evidence for translanguaging pedagogy in the EFL Saudi context. Finally, this study provides recommendations for policy and practice in enabling a collaborative translanguaging pedagogy approach in the EFL classroom.63 0