Translingual approaches to reading and writing

Centering students' languages and cultures within reflective practices of translation

Abstract

This collaborative project examines the challenges to reading and writing that surround international students who enrol in U.S. first-year-writing courses, with the goal to both query and enhance students' ability to read and write in their target language, while drawing on their home languages and cultures as translingual and transcultural resources. Specifically, we discuss the reading and writing practices of multilingual students in the context of a translation assignment. This assignment is unique in its use of learner-centered pedagogy to place students' translingual movement among languages as a site for inquiry and a subject of analysis in their development of L2 reading and writing skills.