[Applause] so what is translanguaging why translanguaging is using language as a unitary meaning making system of the speakers that what we have to remember is that translanguaging it's always with all of us who are bilinguals right you may be hearing what you think is English now but I am selecting from my unitary repertoire signs that you say they're English and I recognize this English right but so it's not that English and Spanish do not exist it is that from my own perspective what I have is I have one language repertoire from which I select features that are appropriate to communicate so and this was given to me by a child cause always children know best and it's important to know that I didn't think of this in my head I saw this because I started out as a bilingual teacher and all my life I've worked in classrooms with teachers and I would go in and the teachers would say or today I'm teaching in Spanish and then I would go in and the children were using their entire language repertoire the teachers were sometimes and also using English and when I asked one child one day well what is happening here he said to me well even though Spanish from through my heart English rules my veins and I thought okay we have to think then how do we teach this bilingual child so that it's a whole system it is not separate as we see it right so just to review just remind you there are two perspectives one is the external societal perspective from which we say there are two named languages named languages as standardized conventions that belong to nation states and this is important and that schools teach and test so they're very important now notice I'm not saying that they're not important I'm saying that they are important except we cannot start there if we start there we are not starting from the epistemology of a bilingual child right if we start there it doesn't work we are talking about the internal perspective of the speaker the language as a unitary meaning making system of speakers that is always with them and that reflects this entanglement of world's cultural practice and words linguistic practices in which all bilinguals are always immersed right and that I'm saying that that is most important and what we do in schools is we emphasize that part and ignore the language repertoire of the child right so I'm saying that both are important but I'm saying that this is most important and that's what we miss sometimes right so I just want to sort of think about these three concepts that we constantly work with the idea of multi lingual is and flora lingual ism of translanguaging multilingualism in the way that we use it in the United States which I know is not the way that the European that the Council of Europe has used but multilingualism in the way that we use it refers to someone having a dominant language an l1 and then having l2 and l3 that are below is a hierarchical relationship because we're thinking of what is dominant in society that's goes first and then the others are afterwards the plurilingualism concept does better but they still are they're talking about languages and I still think they're talking about bringing together the European citizens and therefore they talk about the partial competence that people could have in second and third and fourth languages so again there's still the hierarchy there's still the power really is in the language right not in the speaker translanguaging thus away with the language hierarchies and returns the power to the speaker not to the nation-state but to the speaker what do speakers do and that's why we have only one box that has no hierarchical relationships and we're talking about features that are not that internal internally we have that are not l1 and l2 and l3 their ends they're ours right so features that there are ours they're the speakers and that we select as we make ourselves known okay so now I'm turning into the classroom I have called it that Rams language in Korean take the current right because sometimes we see it sometimes we don't but it's always there when you work with multilingual children it's always there right and I think often it's like being at the shore you know I love the sea and I am what I'm not sure I say well where does a sea begin and where the system begin depends right and it's the same with our languages when our languages are internal we don't know when one ends and the other begins right so it's this idea that we're talking about beyond languages and that this current is always with us right so Ricardo especially talks about the speaker's idiolect shaping their own language repertoire we all have an idea left right that is ours and this of course is also surrounded by this communicative repertoire so it's not only our linguistic repertoire which is related to our idiolect but also how we surrounded by gestures by context by other ways of making meaning and how we bring that forth as hints so that you we select what it is that is important so that you here construct or not a message I hope that you're constructing a message but I don't know right I I speak I hope that you might select science and I hope give you hints of what you should be thinking about but you are constructing a message or not right okay so that's what translanguaging is about translanguaging is that act that takes you into a translanguaging space space when we deploy we deploy the features of our four repertoire ah and that then there's a transaction between the interlocutors right so that's that's the idea so what is a translanguaging classroom that a translanguaging catalyst room then takes into account the students unitary linguistic system and gives opportunities to deploy their full linguistic repertoire and not only the particular name languages right so both things and it validates the bilingual community practices as well as those sanction in schools because it's important to remember that all bilingual communities trans language it is the norm in bilingual communities to do it this way right it's just school that do not allow the children to to do it right so why translanguaging what is it and how is it done so I think it's very important to first always remember the why right because without the why doesn't make any sense any of the work we do does not make any sense so one of the important things is to make sure that we understand that when translanguaging is not taken into account you are doing injustice to the children to language minorities children you are not being fair you are not thinking of social justice you are not thinking of how to make the situation more equal so one thing is that when you teach them you're only mobilizing less than half of their repertoire you're leaving another big part away not considering it and I think even more important when you assess them when you test them you are testing them in less than half of their repertoire so it's very important to remember that this shift that has to take place has to take place because if you don't take translanguaging into account you are instructing the children with less than half of the repertoire and you're assessing only less than half of their repertoire so of course they're always going to do poorer than monolingual children because monolingual children are being assessed with almost their full repertoire almost because sometimes not all but almost a full repertoire with our bilingual children you're only assessing less than half of it so you know I I say well it's like assessing drummers someone plays with the two hands the other one only plays with one and you're thinking that the sound has to be the same impossible right so I think it's important to think of the why but then the what and in the translanguaging classroom we talk about three components one the stands that is the belief the attitude that you have to have because before you start teaching you have to have a stance you have to have a belief positions right the second thing is a design how do you design a classroom so that you can really make this work and the third thing is a shift because if even after you're designing classrooms even after you've gotten your lesson plan even after you have grouped the students so that they can work together there are times in teaching which after all of you know will teach well you have to change right so there has to be shifts and and it's important to think of when the ships have to occur so let me first start with a stance with a belief right one belief is that you have to go beyond the name languages right oh the name languages themselves are not enough another belief is that you have to think of how to construct a unitary bilingual voice that is their own not just the languages isolated another belief is that this has to be done not only for scaffolding teachers often believe in translanguaging right away as a scaffold as a way of facilitating meaning for students but what they have a hard time doing is thinking of what are the transformations that take place through translanguaging right so I think I always like to talk about not the scaffolding part not not translanguaging for the child who came in yesterday and therefore you have to use translanguaging cause otherwise he or she doesn't understand what's going on but for the child was already bilingual how do you transform the sense of who they are their subjectivity through translanguaging so we call it the juntos dance together stands juntos in Spanish means to get there and one of the things and so these are the four stances that we work with so that the teachers understand that the bilingual students do not have except separate name languages but that these all the features work juntos right they work together that they also are not simply two different people that they do not have two separate identities if you're gonna stay you have one identity one identity that is complex and dynamic and that shifts but it's one identity and you have to remember that there is this whom to identity the other thing is that there is no second language acquisition in the traditional sense but that what we are doing is we are helping students acquire 'unto the the old features and the new features so that they can then create they can appropriate these new features into their own language repertoire so it's not that of the other it's not that of the Germans is not that of the Americans it is their own right so that's that's one thing and then the idea that it's not simply a scaffold but that it could be transformative just to end and to summarize so translanguaging has to do with dwelling in the border in these border lands with a linguistically minoritized it has to it's important because it redresses the power differentials and the systems of control that have been installed in the conceptions of languages and sign systems by colonial expansion and nation-building secondly it is not simple border crossing but dwelling in the world and the word entangled through and by the coloniality of power and and thirdly it's going beyond name languages you don't [Applause] you