How Chinese Senior High English Teachers Utilize and Perceive Translanguaging Practices in Classrooms: A Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

The past two decades have seen the rapid development of translanguaging research. However, due to the acceptance of English immersion instruction, research on translanguaging in Chinese EFL classrooms at the senior high level has been relatively limited. Notably, there is a critical gap in understanding teachers’ translanguaging practices and attitudes in senior high schools. The present mixed-methods study contributes to this research agenda and seeks to explore specific practices and attitudes towards translanguaging. Following translanguaging pedagogy and sociocultural theory, the study included video recordings of five teachers’ classes and interviews with four of these teachers, complemented by a questionnaire survey of 63 teachers. The study found that teachers employed these types of translanguaging: explaining unplanned vocabulary, clarifying grammatical concepts, localising content knowledge, provoking critical thoughts, and facilitating tasks. As for attitudes, teachers held generally positive but contextually grounded attitudes, showed greater acceptance of their own translanguaging than of students’ translanguaging, and positioned translanguaging as student-centred scaffolding despite favouring the monolingual principle. Implications include the strategic value of translanguaging in enhancing comprehension and participation, underscoring the need for teacher development focused on language ideology. Limitations include the absence of data on teachers’ emotions and student perspectives. Future research could explore the longitudinal effects of translanguaging on language learning and how monolingual ideologies influence classroom practices and perceptions.