Explore our Approach
Three theoretical ideas guide our approach to supporting bi/multilingual students in CS education: translanguaging, literate programming, and syncretic computational literacies. While we see all three ideas as connected, this section focuses on tranglanguaging theory. The next section on translanguaging pedagogy connects all three with some examples from CS classrooms.
Translanguaging
Warm up
Have you ever sent a text message made only of gifs or emoji?
- yes
- no
Have you ever tried to make yourself understood through gesture when you had trouble communicating with spoken language?
- yes
- no
Have you ever used machine translation to help you communicate or understand?
- yes
- no
Have you ever tried to guess words you don't understand from context?
- yes
- no
Have you ever chosen to use words from another language to express yourself more fully?
- yes
- no
Have you ever picked up and started to use a word your students use all the time?
- yes
- no
If you said yes to any of these questions, you've translanguaged!
Video
Check out the video below to learn more about translanguaging.
Translanguaging Definition
Translanguaging is what bi/multilinguals do when they flexibly use their full linguistic and semiotic repertoires -- including home language, English, gestures, drawing, and more -- to make meaning and communicate. Translanguaging practices are often viewed by society as defying “standard named languages,” but really, translanguaging questions the nature and politics of those “standard” categories (García & Li Wei, 2014)
Reflection Exercises
To wrap your head around translanguaging, watch the video below (a promo for the Netflix series "Gentefied") and respond to the reflection questions below.