Translation and translanguaging pedagogies in intercomprehension and multilingual teaching

Abstract

Since 2007, California State University, Long Beach has developed and offered courses that highlight students’ pre-existing linguistic repertoires in English and in the Romance languages. These courses are unique in that they build upon a multilingual base for the acquisition of new languages through the method of intercomprehension. As an approach that moves among languages, Intercomprehension places learners in conditions that are conducive to translanguaging and translation. This paper discusses the role of translation and translanguaging in Intercomprehension as a pedagogical approach in these courses. Since our students are constantly moving between English and one ormore Romance language(s), they actively bring the other Romance languages they are learning into the translingual repertoire they already practice through the multilingual learning strategies deployed in intercomprehension.