Translanguaging in a Multilingual Classroom in Luxembourg

Research in bilingual and trilingual schools shows that knowledge and understanding can be increased by translanguaging (Baker & Wright 2017, Kirsch 2017), the enactment of a student’s linguistic and non-linguistic resources. Yet, research on translanguaging including migrant languages in multilingual schools remains scarce (Duarte 2018). In multilingual Luxembourg, over 60% of the students indicate to have a dominant home language other than Luxembourgish, with Portuguese being the most used language (MENJE 2018). Considering that theteaching of Luxembourgish, French and German accounts for 40.5% of the instruction time, little room is left for the students’ home languages and the school system is particularly challenging for the students whose language repertoires deviate from the official curriculum. The present doctoral project investigates how primary school students with a migration background deploy their language repertoires to learn.
In this paper, I examine the extent to which two fourth-graders with a Portuguese background and a different migration experience mobilize their languages while interacting with the teacher and peers. Data stem from eighteen days of observation and video-recordings. The thematic analysis focuses on the students’ participation and their language use in different school subjects. Preliminary findings show that the students participate unequally and use their languages differently in terms of purpose and frequency and depending on their migration experience. The findings are tentative because data collection is on-going.