Viniti Vaish is an Associate Professor (tenured) at Singapore’s National Institute of Education, English Language and Literature Department. She has an interest in the measurement and enhancement of bilingualism and biliteracy. Her latest book is:
Vaish, V. (2020). Translanguaging in Multilingual English Classrooms: An Asian Perspective and Contexts. Singapore: Springer.
Brief:
This presentation analyzes translanguaging strategies to support early learners struggling to read in English and opines on growth areas for the theory and practice of translanguaging. Though there is language shift in Singapore over the decades towards English, the exposure that children experience to standard English varies as this exposure is distributed across multiple languages, dialects and registers. In the primary school classroom children in Singapore could come from English dominant homes, homes where English and Mother Tongue are spoken equally, or Mother Tongue dominant homes. As with the quantity of language exposure, the quality of language could range from standard to colloquial varieties. Due to patterns of exposure and other reasons, some children enter primary school without the requisite language skills to master reading in English. Based on empirical data from my research projects, this presentation discusses translanguaging strategies that were tried out in Singapore’s Learning Support Program to support young learners struggling to read in English. Translanguaging enhanced comprehension and stimulated cross linguistic transfer; however, this strategy also surfaced challenges. Specifically, the challenges included teacher training, pedagogy to service a diverse classroom with multiple home languages, and lack of standardized measures within the field of translanguaging to assess the outcomes. Finally, the future of translanguaging needs to tackle these issues along with considering the juggernaut of AI which will impact future classrooms.
