Using Spanish in English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices

Maria Isela Maier, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

This dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students’ use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students’ writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students’ translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use of language and bilinguals’ agentic role. Findings also show that there are also firmly established ideologies that prevent bilingual students from realizing the benefits of translanguaging. Understanding bilingual students’ translanguaging practices can aid in remapping and enhancing institutional policies and pedagogical practices and move in a positive direction toward adopting more inclusive approaches that honor students’ linguistic repertoires and their cultural backgrounds, and thus, gradually reorienting standard language ideology.

Subject Area

Language|Higher education|English as a Second Language|Multicultural Education|Bilingual education

Recommended Citation

Maier, Maria Isela, "Using Spanish in English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices" (2019). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI27667276.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI27667276

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