Teaching english in the 21st century: pedagogical translanguaging with multilingual adolescents

Abstract

This thesis examines the effect of pedagogical translanguaging on the development of cognate and morphological awareness in multilingual adolescents learning English as a third language. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study also analyses participants’ beliefs on multilingualism and pedagogical translanguaging. The pedagogical intervention, implemented with 86 multilingual adolescents in the province of Valencia, is based on the activation of the students’ whole linguistic repertoire by establishing cross-linguistic similarities. The instruments used included a cognate and morphological awareness test, a beliefs questionnaire, a translanguaging questionnaire and oral interviews. The results show that pedagogical translanguaging had a positive effect on the acquisition of third language vocabulary. In addition, participants reported favourable thoughts towards the inclusion of Spanish and Catalan in the English language classroom and showed positive beliefs regarding the implementation of pedagogical translanguaging.