The Relationship between Translanguaging Perceptions and Language Teacher Immunity

Abstract

Acknowledging the difference in the lexical backgrounds of students and teachers aids in having a realistic picture of how learning happens. Translanguaging promotes learning by exploring the multilingual capabilities of students. However, it is not sufficient to only account for the learner aspect of the matter. One way of considering the influence of educators is to start conversations about teacher immunity. Language teacher immunity allows teachers to function effectively at school and to appreciate new approaches. For the purpose of evaluating the link between Translanguaging and teacher immunity only a handful of studies have worked on this issue. The present work attempted to bridge the gap in the literature by surveying 207 Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions toward translanguaging. This study aimed at finding connections between Translanguaging and teacher immunity in order to potentially develop teacher resilience by utilizing the full potential of the students’ lexicon. Participants were from both genders and were different in terms of their experience, native language, and their current field of study. The data collected from this denoted that Iranian EFL teachers have moderate immunity in their pedagogies. Approximately 61% of the participants chose to teach English using both Persian and English and 54% think using Persian to teach English is beneficial for students. Mostly, participants reported that they sometimes encourage and personally use Persian to teach English in different activities. Finally, the educators’ views of taking advantage of the complete gamut of language means of students by translanguaging techniques could not be clarified by their competence in dealing with complicated work conditions.

Keywords

• bilingualism
• efl teachers
• language teacher immunity
• pedagogies
• second language learning
• translanguaging