Translanguaging in a Chinese–English bilingual education programme: a university-classroom ethnography

Since 2001, Chinese-English bilingual education has been officially promoted in many universities in mainland China. It has, however, recently been criticised for not only failing to improve students' English proficiency, but also impeding subject knowledge learning. Drawing on ethnographic dat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of bilingual education and bilingualism Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 322 - 337
Main Authors Wang, Weihong, Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Taylor & Francis Ltd 03.04.2019
Subjects
Bilingual education
Bilingualism
Chinese languages
Code switching
English as a second language
English for Academic Purposes
English proficiency
Ethnography
Fieldwork
Higher education
Ideology
Stereotypes
Student Improvement
Translanguaging
Undergraduate education
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Summary:Since 2001, Chinese-English bilingual education has been officially promoted in many universities in mainland China. It has, however, recently been criticised for not only failing to improve students' English proficiency, but also impeding subject knowledge learning. Drawing on ethnographic data collected through classroom observations, interviews and fieldwork notes, this study examines the practices of bilingual education in an undergraduate Business Management Programme in one university. The study reveals that translanguaging is a prominent phenomenon in almost all subject courses in the programme. The translanguaging practices can be largely grouped into four categories: bilingual label quest, simultaneous code-mixing, cross-language recapping, and dual-language substantiation. The study further identifies supportiveness and freedom of context as two major forces that spurred the practices of translanguaging in the programme. The study concludes by arguing that an ideological reorientation towards flexible bilingualism is emerging in such BE contexts, which might be a favourable move away from the monolingual stereotype manifested in the traditional teaching-English-as-a-foreign-language and content-subject courses that envision English-medium instruction. A translanguaging perspective might give the current practices of BE due recognition.
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ISSN:1367-0050
1747-7522
DOI:10.1080/13670050.2018.1526254