Indonesian university students’ practices and perspectives on translanguaging

Abstract

Despite the growing research on translanguaging, additional research is still needed, especially in the students’ actual practice of translanguaging in Indonesian university classrooms and its inherent emotional state. Addressing this gap, our study aims to explore university students’ practices and perspectives towards translanguaging in classroom presentations with students’ state of emotion during presentations. This qualitative case study was chosen to have an in-depth analysis of an issue under investigation. Data were collected via Zoom video recording and semi-structured interviews. Garcia and Li Wei’s (2014) theory of translanguaging is used as an umbrella to analyze data, followed by our use of Li Wei's (2011) moment analysis and Baker's (2011) pedagogical function of translanguaging to strengthen the analysis. This study revealed that translanguaging is mostly appreciated by respondents as it can diminish language anxiety with one student’s criticism on the potential overuse of translanguaging. Translanguaging, as reported, also helped respondents with better comprehension, growing confidence, and enhanced equity. The pedagogical implication of this study is that Indonesian university EFL teachers could develop a more flexible syllabus, enabling university students to use English with the possibility of translanguage when needed. However, translanguaging should be used with caution.

Keywords

• efl students
• language anxiety
• moment analysis
• online classroom
• pedagogical function
• presentation
• translanguaging