Translanguaging pedagogy in EAP writing: A multilingual Qazaq instructor’s perspective

Abstract

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors may struggle to capitalize on students’ multilingual practices in teaching and demystifying academic writing, considering the expectation to use standard English. My teaching report is situated in Qazaqstan, where I worked as an EAP instructor with first-year undergraduate students for whom Qazaq and Russian are the dominant languages, English is a foreign language, and translanguaging is a commonplace practice. The paper shares how I built on my shared linguistic and cultural background with my students to implement translanguaging pedagogy for teaching EAP writing in a hybrid course at an English-medium university. A major takeaway from my teaching experience is to establish a translanguaging space, in which students with different translanguaging beliefs can explore pedagogical translanguaging. The pedagogical translanguaging instructions used in writing one academic essay were focused on developing an outline, citations, and rough drafts. Throughout the essay completion in person and online, students and I discussed translanguaging writing examples, drew on our metalinguistic awareness, and critical discussions of linguistic choices. Overall, this paper illuminates on how an EAP instructor with a similar linguistic background to their students can disrupt monolingual norms, and use translanguaging pedagogy for linguistically just academic writing instruction