“I Don't Let What I Don't Know Stop What I Can do”—How Monolingual English Teachers Constructed a Translanguaging Pre-K Classroom in China

Abstract

Guided by translanguaging pedagogy, this study examines how monolingual English teachers in a Pre-K school in China navigate between English and Chinese to construct a translanguaging classroom. Findings based on classroom observations and interviews reveal that, despite being constrained by their monolingualism, the English teachers enacted translanguaging in multiple ways creating three translanguaging components: translanguaging assistance, translanguaging assessment, and translanguaging showcases. Translanguaging assistance enables children to learn English with the assistance of their first language; translanguaging assessment evaluates children's English language skills within a spectrum of multilingual funds of knowledge, and translanguaging showcases define strategic activities to unlock children's full linguistic repertoires, activate their creative voices, and let their bilingualism shine. This study provides pedagogical guidelines that balance the goal of learning a language and developing children's bilingualism through an iterative enactment of the three translanguaging components.