TESOL pre-service teacher’s perception towards pedagogical translanguaging in language education

Abstract

English language teaching has moved towards a post-method paradigm where students’ whole linguistic repertoire is valued as a linguistic resource for language practice, and not anymore seen as interference of students’ L1. As the concept of translanguaging spread to teacher trainer education, research indicates that the field of TESOL is still bonded to the ‘English-only’ approach in ELT. This formative paper intends to explore perceptions of foreign English teachers in Thailand and their perceptions towards pedagogical translanguaging. 64 pre-service teachers in the TESOL program participated in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data was obtained by using an adapted survey from Moody, Chowdhurry, and Eslami [21] and Mazak and Riveria [23]. Result shows that the use of translanguaging in class is neutral towards negative, most still holding on to the linguistic imperialism of English language teaching. However, qualitative data shows that pre-service teachers appear to view translanguaging not as a process of learning and teaching, but as a functional tool to raise students’ attention, especially when teaching young emergent bilingual students.