Disrupting Monolingual Ideologies: Constructing Biliterate Composing Practices in a Second‐grade Classroom

Abstract

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English‐medium schools where their bi‐ and multi‐lingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. This article draws on a social literacies perspective to explore how a second‐grade teacher and her multilingual students re‐framed one English‐medium classroom to welcome and include biliterate composing practices, in opposition to monoglossic norms. Findings illustrate moves made by a teacher to launch new biliterate writing practices, including talking about rationales, and providing invitations, support, and recognition for bilingual composing. In particular, analyses show that talking about rationales or reasons for biliterate composing was central to disrupting English‐only discourses and instead building new ways of thinking about and enacting bilingual writing. Analyses then trace intercontextual connections across events to illustrate how repeated, connected talk about these rationales over time opened spaces for students to take up bilingual composing practices. The article concludes by discussing implications for teachers and researchers who are interested in supporting emergent bilingual students’ bi‐ and multi‐lingual language use in English‐medium schools.

Social Functions of Students’ Translingual Composing in an English-Medium, Second-Grade Classroom

“…In these interactions, students included translingual text in response to a personalized, teacher-issued invitation. These invitations were tied to reasons (Rowe, 2022), such as presenting the real language practices of characters in the story, and paired with language-specific spelling support. Interactionally, then, children were “doing school” (Bloome et al, 1989; Knobel, 1999) as they created texts using LBE.…”

“…As part of her writing instruction, Mrs. Díaz sought to support her students' multilingualism. She engaged in many instructional practices to do this, including demonstrating creating bilingual texts, inviting students to include translingual text in their own writing, and offering support and recognition of students' translingual composing (see Rowe, 2022 for more detail on Mrs. Díaz's instructional practices).…”

Utforskande meningsskapande i sva-undervisning via digital teknik : en etnografisk fallstudie om nyanlända elevers digitala meningsskapande i svenska som andraspråk

“…Flera tidigare studier visar att kombinationen av digital teknik och translanguaging i undervisningen bidrar till elever kan använda sin flerspråkighet för att skapa nya sätt att skriva och tänka eftersom de kan använda sina flerspråkiga erfarenheter som en tillgång i meningsskapandet (L.W. Rowe, 2022;. Detta bidrar även till elevernas agens i sitt meningsskapande .…”

“…Ett liknande scenario som det presenterar finns i Rowe's (2022) studier av flerspråkiga klassrumspraktiker. Rowe (2022) synliggör hur lärarens orkestrering av undervisningen stöttade flerspråkiga textproduktioner. Läraren introducerade flerspråkigt skrivande och uppmärksammade hur flerspråkighet kunde användas som en resurs och bjöd på så sätt in till en flerspråkig klassrumsmiljö.…”

“…Eleverna blev experter eftersom de hade agens kring hur de kunde använda sina flerspråkiga resurser i skrivandet. Läraren stöttning låg i att hjälpa elever med strategier kring translanguaging, att använda digital teknik för översättningar eller att uppmärksamma eleverna på hur de kunde ta hjälp från klasskamrater eller familjemedlemmar (Rowe, 2022).…”