When teaching translingual writing in EFL contexts for academic purposes, the first and most challenge is about teaching academic rules and conventions. Given that translingual writing foregrounds writers' agency engaging in meaning negotiation and resistance to unequal power imposed by dominant language. However, considering the politics of academic writing and publications, translingual writing with code-meshing should be rhetorically justified by taking academic conventions and readers' expectations into account (Canagarajah, 2013).
Given that my students are novice EFL writers who have never learned English academic writing conventions, I have to teach writing rules, forms, conventions and therefore provide norms to scaffold their learning. Following Horner, Lu et al (2011), I provided explicit and descriptive instruction in English academic rules and conventions, and also compared and contrasted them with Chinese writing. I also inductively guided students to outline a reading sample in order to help students elicit the frame and form of academic writing. Drawing parallels to inductive instruction, I deductively highlighted the notions of topic sentence, thesis statement, and supporting points. Although I addressed differences between English and Chinese writings, which is suggested to be beneficial to development of critical awareness of translingual practices (Gevers, 2018), students' attention without doubt was on English writing norms and conventions. To a certain extent, monolingual pedagogy focusing on forms and rules is integrated into my translingual classroom. I am wondering, what is the line that I should not cross when conducting monolingual instruction in teaching translingual writing? How can I, on the one hand, asking students to practice their writing by following the rules, but, on the other hand, reminding them that it's just a convention of academic communities, and it should be critically negotiated.
Not surprisingly, when receiving students' writing, I noticed that few of them paid attention to strategies of resistance to the dominant discourse. Instead, they took my idea of "negotiation" as an excuse for their low quality work that might be competed at the last minute, and I also noticed that what were followed are the conventions and rules.
Following and learning rules and conventions are much easier than negotiating rules and conventions. And following and learning rules and conventions have long been taken as what good students do. They love learning conventions and rules because they can soon gain a sense of achievement as a writer who can write in English. If this is their learning context and expectation from the society, how can translingual approach fit in the context?
They don't have desire to negotiate meaning to argue against unequal power relations or speak to justify their peripheral identity. They believe that they are the "learners" who do not have equal language competence as the native speakers, and who need to learn English by being scaffolded by giving rules and standard models.
REFERENCES
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global englishes and cosmopolitan relations. New York: Routledge.
Horner, B., Lu, M. Z., Royster, J. J. & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3), 303-321.
Given that my students are novice EFL writers who have never learned English academic writing conventions, I have to teach writing rules, forms, conventions and therefore provide norms to scaffold their learning. Following Horner, Lu et al (2011), I provided explicit and descriptive instruction in English academic rules and conventions, and also compared and contrasted them with Chinese writing. I also inductively guided students to outline a reading sample in order to help students elicit the frame and form of academic writing. Drawing parallels to inductive instruction, I deductively highlighted the notions of topic sentence, thesis statement, and supporting points. Although I addressed differences between English and Chinese writings, which is suggested to be beneficial to development of critical awareness of translingual practices (Gevers, 2018), students' attention without doubt was on English writing norms and conventions. To a certain extent, monolingual pedagogy focusing on forms and rules is integrated into my translingual classroom. I am wondering, what is the line that I should not cross when conducting monolingual instruction in teaching translingual writing? How can I, on the one hand, asking students to practice their writing by following the rules, but, on the other hand, reminding them that it's just a convention of academic communities, and it should be critically negotiated.
Not surprisingly, when receiving students' writing, I noticed that few of them paid attention to strategies of resistance to the dominant discourse. Instead, they took my idea of "negotiation" as an excuse for their low quality work that might be competed at the last minute, and I also noticed that what were followed are the conventions and rules.
Following and learning rules and conventions are much easier than negotiating rules and conventions. And following and learning rules and conventions have long been taken as what good students do. They love learning conventions and rules because they can soon gain a sense of achievement as a writer who can write in English. If this is their learning context and expectation from the society, how can translingual approach fit in the context?
They don't have desire to negotiate meaning to argue against unequal power relations or speak to justify their peripheral identity. They believe that they are the "learners" who do not have equal language competence as the native speakers, and who need to learn English by being scaffolded by giving rules and standard models.
REFERENCES
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global englishes and cosmopolitan relations. New York: Routledge.
Horner, B., Lu, M. Z., Royster, J. J. & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3), 303-321.
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