Newcomers’ translanguaging practices in learning situations

To expand learning opportunities for all students in bilingual schools, including newly-arrived ones, a growing number of scholars advocate for implementing translanguaging pedagogies that leverage the students’ full range of semiotic resources (García et al. 2012). Yet, research which focusses on the newcomers’ translanguaging practices and involves multiple languages remains scarce. Counting less than 2% of Luxembourg’s primary school population (MENEJ 2018), newly-arrived students face an important educational challenge as the instruction of French, German and Luxembourgish accounts for 40.5% of all curricular time. While the present doctoral project investigates the language practices of fourth-graders of different language and migration backgrounds, this paper explores the extent to which two newcomers from different schools, Portuguese-speaking Harry and Slovenian-speaking Leon, mobilize their semiotic resources to learn curricular content in French and Science lessons while interacting with their peers and teachers. Data stem from forty-two days of observation throughout Years 4 and 5, approximately twenty hours of video-recordings and four semi-structured interviews with the students about some of the recorded events. Findings first show that, with peers, Harry and Leon used all institutional languages to discuss curricular content and Harry additionally used Portuguese and English. Second, with teachers, Leon flexibly used all institutional languages, but Harry did not. Third, both newcomers regularly translanguaged in Year 4 but almost completely dropped this practice in Year 5. The students’ differing translanguaging practices likely connect to the language practices of their interlocutors and the learning situations within the classroom contexts.