Translanguaging as a pedagogical practice in Chinese language and (inter)culture courses

As Chinese-as-an-additional-language (CAL) practitioners actively seek to bridge the language-culture divide in class instruction and curriculum, various strategies have been adopted to integrate cultural components into traditionally defined “language courses” or vice versa. However, many such strategies follow a “monolingual approach” that views L1 primarily as a source of interference in second language acquisition (SLA). Recognizing the importance of L1 use in additional-language classrooms, this paper proposes to apply the theory of translanguaging as the underlying pedagogy of CAL courses that holistically integrate language, culture, and intercultural learning. This approach fully recognizes students as multilingual and multicultural learners by judiciously and strategically combining L1 and L2 in order to maximize the growth of students’ overall linguacultural proficiency. The paper presents two course examples to discuss the implementation and benefits of this approach: a course on Chinese calligraphy for students with intermediate proficiency in the Chinese language and a course on Sino-US intercultural communication for students with advanced proficiency. These courses demonstrate that the translanguaging approach facilitates in-depth intellectual inquiries and critical thinking and encourages Chinese language learning in an interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interactive context. The paper concludes by extending the vision of translanguaging to the overall CAL curriculum and discussing its implication for the field.

从事美国大学本科中文作为附加语言教学的教师们正在积极改变长期以来语言课与文化课分家的状态，但目前常用的策略方式还主要拘泥于单语模式，即认为学生的第一语言对二语习得起阻碍作用，从而对教学中使用英文有所禁忌。本文作者则认为第一语言在学习其他语言时起着积极重要的作用；二语习得是将学生变为二语或多语使用者，而不是用二语替换一语使其成为另一单语者。基于此认识，本文尝试将应用语言学的新兴理论“跨语言化”(translanguaging) 应用到中文语言和文化教学实践中，从而将中文教学中的语言、文化、跨文化全面融合。这种教学法充分认识到学生是多语多文化的习得者，并通过合理设计将中文和英文资源策略性地融合，以求最大限度地全面提高学生的语言文化及跨文化交流能力。本文提供两门课作为范例，一门是为中级水平学生开设的书法课，一门是为高级水平学生开设的跨文化交流课。通过这两门课的实践证明，跨语言化的教学法不仅可以促使大学生进行深层次的人文思考和批判性思维的锻炼，而且有助于提高学生的主观能动性，使其在跨学科、跨文化和互动语境中积极进行语言习得。文章在结论部分进一步展望了跨语言化教学法在整个中文教学项目中的应用及其深远影响。