A Study Of The Effects Of Translanguaging In Prewriting Discussion On Chinese EFL Learners’ Academic Writing

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of translanguaging to describe and explain the flexible way in which bilinguals draw upon their full linguistic repertoire.An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that translanguaging could serve as an effective teaching method and learning strategy,especially for the promotion of students’ biliteracy.The beneficial roles of translanguaging have also been widely acknowledged in second language writing.In light of these studies,prewriting discussion has been advocated as a good way of creating the translanguaging space in second or foreign language writing classrooms.However,few studies have examined the potential effects of translanguaging on academic writing.Motivated by these research gaps,the present study aims to investigate the effects of translanguaging in prewriting discussion on Chinese English as a foreign language(EFL)learners’ academic writing.Forty Chinese tertiary students majoring in English were recruited in the present study to complete an academic reading-to-writing task.All participants were randomly split into translanguaging group and English group.Then,they were required to read a designated academic reading material,to discuss in pairs(N=10 pairs in the PWD-E group and N=10 pairs in the PWD-TL group),and to independently write an academic review in English.After they finished writing,semi-structured interviews regarding translanguaging perceptions were conducted.This study collected multiple data including academic written texts,prewriting discussion audio-recordings,and semi-structured interviews.Qualitative and quantitative analysis were both applied to gain a better understanding of the effects of translanguaging on Chinese EFL learners’ academic writing.Quantitative analysis showed that participants in the PWD-TL group wrote academic reviews with higher quality.To be specific,students in the PWD-TL group outperformed those in the PWD-E group in terms of content richness,organization,and source use.Based on the qualitative analysis of prewriting discussion audio-recordings,the overall characteristics and major functions of translanguaging were identified and reported.Students in the PWD-TL group were encouraged to deploy their full linguistic repertoire,and their discussion showed frequent translanguaging use and fewer communication breakdowns.It was found that translanguaging performed four major functions in prewriting discussion:enhancing critical thinking,promoting meaning negotiation,facilitating personal experience retrieval,and providing vocabulary-related assistance.In line with these research findings,participants interviewed held positive perceptions of translanguaging use in academic writing.The present study verifies the positive potential of translanguaging on Chinese EFL learners’ academic writing.Findings of this study provide not only empirical evidence for translanguaging theory but also pedagogical implications for opening up the translanguaging space in Chinese EFL academic writing context.In addition,prewriting discussion is enlightened as a good way of creating such translanguaging space.At last,limitations of the present study are pointed out with suggestions for future research.