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“ Second language development: A strong foundation in the home language facilitates the learning of a second language.

Social-emotional development: Children who see that their home language is valued build a positive and healthy self-identity and stronger sense of pride in their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Facilitates and deepens relationships: Professionals who ask families to only speak to their children in English should understand that family members who are not fluent in English cannot effectively engage and communicate with their children. More specifically:

Children and parents who share the same language are able to interact with each other in more meaningful ways.

Family and community members who only speak the home language (e.g., grandparents, friends, relatives in the home country) are able to contribute to the child’s cultural growth, increase their vocabulary and communication skills, and share valuable learning experiences.

Home-school collaboration: When schools communicate with families in the home language:

Families can better support their children using the strategies and techniques that early childhood and special education professionals share with them.

Families can share important information that can in turn be used to enhance their children’s learning.

Cognition: Bilingual students are generally flexible thinkers and problem solvers and have an easier time understanding math concepts and solving word problems.

Future employability: There is a growing need for individuals who are proficient in two or more languages in today’s world economy and socio-political climate.”

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Page 3: Importance of Home Language Maintenance

Whether a family has been in the United States for only a few years or for generations, they speak and pass on their languages and cultural heritages to their children through conversations, stories, music, prayers, and more. When a child's first language is not nurtured, they often lose opportunities to communicate with parents, family members, and others in their community. There are many reasons early childhood and special education professionals and families should work together to help maintain the children and families' home languages.

Second language development: A strong foundation in the home language facilitates the learning of a second language.

Social-emotional development: Children who see that their home language is valued build a positive and healthy self-identity and stronger sense of pride in their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Facilitates and deepens relationships: Professionals who ask families to only speak to their children in English should understand that family members who are not fluent in English cannot effectively engage and communicate with their children. More specifically:

Children and parents who share the same language are able to interact with each other in more meaningful ways.

Family and community members who only speak the home language (e.g., grandparents, friends, relatives in the home country) are able to contribute to the child's cultural growth, increase their vocabulary and communication skills, and share valuable learning experiences.

Home-school collaboration: When schools communicate with families in the home language:

Families can better support their children using the strategies and techniques that early childhood and special education professionals share with them.

Families can share important information that can in turn be used to enhance their children's learning.

Cognition: Bilingual students are generally flexible thinkers and problem solvers and have an easier time understanding math concepts and solving word problems.

Future employability: There is a growing need for individuals who are proficient in two or more languages in today's world economy and socio-political climate.

Listen as Robert Stechuk and Patsy Pierce discuss some of the reasons it is important to maintain a child and family's home language.

Patsy Pierce, PhD
Consultant, National Center on Cultural
and Linguistic Responsiveness

(time: 1:46)

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View Transcript
Transcript: Robert Stechuk, PhD

Some school systems may have dozens of languages, more than a hundred home languages. The key message for me is that programs can clearly state to families that their home language is important. Whether they're children with disabilities or children who are developing typically, we want families to understand the importance of the child's home language. The way to understand that importance is the recognition that all the developmental domains are connected. When the child grows up with a home language-whether it's Arabic or Korean or Spanish or something else-all the other developmental domains are engaged with that home language. The child's identity is rooted in that language. The child's thinking skills are developing in that language. The child's metalinguistic observations and understandings are developing in that language. If the message to families is, "Your language isn't important" then it negates all those important connections, and it really prevents the child from continuing to develop their identity, their thinking skills, their metalinguistic awareness, et cetera.

We want families to recognize that by continuing to speak their home language, continuing to ask questions, have conversations, sing songs, tell stories, read books, the child is able to develop and continue expanding their identity, their thinking skills, their metalinguistic awareness. And that, as the child learns English over time, they can transfer that knowledge from the home language into English. But if the access to the child's home language is interrupted then it seems inevitable that the child's development in other domains will be negatively impacted. So schools can communicate clearly to families the importance of the family's home language and encourage families to use those basic strategies of conversations, of book reading, of extended narratives, open-ended questions, et cetera, to support the child's maximum overall development.

Transcript: Patsy Pierce, PhD

It's so important for children who are dual language learners to continue to develop their home language while learning English, because we know that the home language is serving as the phonological basis and the semantic basis and the syntactical basis for language learning. Sometimes families think, "They won't learn English unless I speak English to them, and I'm not going to use my home language anymore." And we know from current research that's just not true, because language always develops between people who share a positive relationship. So if families stop speaking the language they are strongest in then that could hinder the ongoing development of the relationship and would definitely hinder the home-language development of the child. So helping families to realize, for young dual language learners, with or without disabilities, they really should continue to talk with them in their home language to continue to build that language base. Then at school-if it's primarily an English-speaking school or whatever the second language is-the academic language will build on the home language. They're bringing that really strong base of language into school that then can translate and be the basis for further language learning. I think that's just really important to help families realize that it's essential to continue home-language development.

Keep in Mind

Many parents have experienced prejudice because of their lack of English proficiency. They are concerned that their children will not be as successful in school and in society if they continue to speak their home languages. Teachers can help parents understand the benefits of being proficient in multiple languages.

Early childhood and special education professionals can support the maintenance of home languages by collaborating with families. Some strategies to help families understand the value and benefits of maintaining the home language include:

Sharing resources with families about the importance and value in maintaining the home language.

Connecting families with experts, business owners, and others in the community to learn about the benefits of maintaining the home language. For example, a local business owner might explain her company's need to hire workers who are multilingual speakers in order to stay competitive in today's global economy.

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IRIS | Page 3: Importance of Home Language Maintenance

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Whether a family has been in the United States for only a few years or for generations, they speak and pass on their languages and cultural heritages to their children through conversations, stories, music, prayers, and more. When a child's first language is not nurtured, they often lose opportunities to communicate with parents, family members, and others in their community.

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Incorporate Home Language - Video - 1:23-2:50

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Incorporate Home Language - Video - 1:23-2:50

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Incorporating home languages shows the students that their teachers are supportive of them as a whole, not just supportive of learning English but truly invested in them as a student.

Parents are extremely grateful

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Teachers, Try This: Incorporate Students’ Home Languages Into Your Classrooms

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Incorporating Home Language - Video - 0:00-1:13

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Incorporating Home Language - Video - 0:00-1:13

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Creating anchor charts, “cheat sheets”, posters, etc that are not only in English, but the students’ home language(s) as well. Include visuals like diagrams, colors, symbols, drawings, etc to help them associate and visualize.

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Teachers, Try This: Incorporate Students’ Home Languages Into Your Classrooms

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”Legitimize the use of the learners’ own language through, for example, offering it as a prominent option when demonstrating ways of presenting new language, or giving instructions. When presenting new language items, highlight the benefits in contrasting languages through the use of formulae such as ‘How would we say that in Spanish? How is it different to English?’.

1. Provide activities and options that constructively use the learners’ own language. These may include:

giving a list of any cognates and ‘teach’ them first, so that learners see how much they already know

using recasts (so when learners use their own language the teacher recasts it to the target language)

allowing the use of the learners’ own language when preparing for speaking tasks

using the first language as a resource to kickstart discussions

using literal translations (for comparative purposes)

analysing machine translations

setting up role plays that exploit interpreting and translation

3. Provide observation tasks that focus on the use of the learners’ own language.

4. Encourage post teaching reflection on both the learners’ use of their own language and the teacher’s use, focusing on issues such as the balance between the languages used in the lesson, whether the uses were constructive and what would have been the likely consequences of switching languages at any point and doing things differently.”

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World of Better Learning | Cambridge University Press

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Teaching practice has traditionally frowned upon the use of learners' own language when learning a new language, but it actually has many benefits. In this post, Peter Watkins, co-author of The CELTA Course, reflects on the benefits of using the learners' own language and how teachers can be supported in doing this.
A changing landscape

In the last fifteen years or so, and fuelled by works such as Cook (2010), Hall and Cook (2013) and Kerr (2014) the place of using the learners' own language in the classroom has been re-evaluated. For many years, the standard practice, at least according to many methodology handbooks, was to minimize the use of any language other than the target language.

There were various reasons for this. The most powerful being that in order to learn a language, the learners need maximum exposure to that language and using any other language reduces this exposure. This makes good sense and few would dispute that generally doing as much as feasible in the target language remains good advice.

In some teaching contexts there has even been a desire to 'ban' the use of already known languages completely. The reason for this may have been based partly on fear that once 'permission' was given to use the known language, it may be overused. While this may be a legitimate concern, the fear of 'overuse' could probably be applied to virtually any teaching strategy. Others would argue that such monolingual policies are a means of unjustly favouring native speaker teachers over non-native speakers.

On the ground

But of course, just because training courses and methodologists say something it doesn't mean that teachers always follow the advice. Many teachers who had the option of using the learners' own language probably did so, trusting their own instincts and understandings of their class. However, some studies have suggested that teachers report guilt at using this option (e.g. Macaro, 2009; Hall and Cook, 2013). It is often seen as an option of 'last resort' - only used when all else has failed.

The evidence

However, research suggests that using the learners' own language, far from being a last resort, can have a positive effect on learning through the comparison and contrast of languages (Cummins, 2007) and in particular leads to efficient vocabulary learning (Nation, 2003; Laufer and Girsai, 2008). Moreover, there are the obvious practical benefits of using a known language to keep the lesson moving and time saved on explanation may free up more valuable time for the learners to use the target language in more important communication. Also, judicious use of the learners' own language can support the learners in communicating the messages that they most want to communicate and this must be beneficial if we truly wish to place communication at the heart of language learning.

Helping new teachers

The potential benefits to using the learners' own language, where there is the opportunity to do so, seem clear. In addition to the points above, at low levels it may be the only realistic way in which teachers can learn about the needs and interests of their learners. However, like any other teaching strategy, new teachers need help and support in judging when to use the known language. It is not easy to get the right balance between the known and target languages and the situations in which the learners' own language will be most effective.

If we want to help new teachers to use the learners' own language wisely and without guilt, how can initial teacher education support them? I think there are several ways:

1. Legitimize the use of the learners' own language through, for example, offering it as a prominent option when demonstrating ways of presenting new language, or giving instructions. When presenting new language items, highlight the benefits in contrasting languages through the use of formulae such as 'How would we say that in Spanish? How is it different to English?'.

2. Provide activities and options that constructively use the learners' own language. These may include:

giving a list of any cognates and 'teach' them first, so that learners see how much they already know

using recasts (so when learners use their own language the teacher recasts it to the target language)

allowing the use of the learners' own language when preparing for speaking tasks

using the first language as a resource to kickstart discussions

using literal translations (for comparative purposes)

analysing machine translations

setting up role plays that exploit interpreting and translation

3. Provide observation tasks that focus on the use of the learners' own language. Here is an example from Classroom Observation from The CELTA Course Trainee Book (second edition):

Focus: Own language use
1. Make a note of all the instances in which either a learner or the teacher uses a language other than English.
2. At what stage(s) of the lesson does this occur?
3. What is the purpose of the communication? (e.g. is it to clarify understanding, ask for help etc.?)
4. How effective was it in achieving this purpose?

Want to find more about teaching tips from CELTA? Read our 3 hands-on teaching techniques with CELTA References
4. Encourage post teaching reflection on both the learners' use of their own language and the teacher's use, focusing on issues such as the balance between the languages used in the lesson, whether the uses were constructive and what would have been the likely consequences of switching languages at any point and doing things differently.

In the second edition of The CELTA Course we have tried to include these principles as we wanted to give greater importance and focus to the use of the learners' first language and show it as a potentially positive thing, rather than represent it as an option of 'last resort'. There are, of course, many other changes that we have made to a book that was originally published fifteen years ago but we have tried to retain the same basic principles. As in the first edition, we wanted to provide material for trainees and trainers that is flexible enough for them to bend to their own particular needs, and also reflects the ethos of the course we ourselves experienced as trainers; something which is practical, experiential and reflective.

Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics (CJAL) 10.2, 221-240.

Hall, G. & Cook, G. (2013). Own-language Use in ELT: Exploring global practices and attitudes. British Council.

Kerr, P. (2014). Translation and own-language activities. Cambridge University Press.

Laufer, B. & Girsai, N. (2008). Form-focused instruction in second language vocabulary learning: A case for contrastive analysis and translation. Applied Linguistics 29.4, 694-716.

Macaro, E. (2009). Teacher codeswitching in L2 classrooms: Exploring 'optimal use'. In Yoshida, T., Imai, H., Nakata, Y., Tajino, A., Takeuchi, O. & Tamai, K. (eds.), Researching language teaching and learning: An integration of practice and theory. Peter Lang, 293-304.
Want to find more about teaching tips from CELTA? Read our 3 hands-on teaching techniques with CELTA
Nation, P. (2003). The role of the first language in foreign language learning. Asian EFL Journal 1, 35-39.

Watkins, P., Thornbury, S. and Millin, S. (2022). The CELTA Course (2 nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Using the learners' own language in the language classroom

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Teaching practice has traditionally frowned upon the use of learners' own language when learning a new language, but it actually has many benefits. Peter Watkins reflects on the benefits of using the learners' own language and how teachers can be supported in doing this.

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The three benefits talked about in this blog post as about how multilingualism supports the mastering of content, encourages collaboration, and helps with communicating ideas.

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English Language Learners

Teachers don't have to speak students' first languages to make room for these languages in middle and high school classrooms.

I loved my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Phillips. I will always remember how safe and welcomed she made me feel. I would watch her give instructions in English, not understanding a word of it, and I would copy what my classmates did. When Mrs. Phillips came over, I would speak unabashedly to her in Vietnamese. She would pay careful attention to my gestures to decipher my message and praise me with a smile in celebration of my work.

You do not need to speak the same language to feel someone's love. I also don't remember her yelling at me to speak English. What would be the use of finger waving and saying, "Speak English!" when Vietnamese was the only language I knew at the time?

As we embrace culturally responsive and culturally sustaining pedagogies, we are abandoning destructive English-only policies. Unfortunately, English-first policies often place other languages last-and, by extension, the cultures represented by non-English languages.

What messages are multilingual learners (MLs) internalizing when the only sanctioned language they hear in schools is English? With an additive approach to language, MLs can learn another language without having to subtract their existing ones.

3 Ways Multilingualism Helps Students Learn

1. Mastering content. I used to think that students had to learn content in English. However, a concept like tectonic plates remains the same regardless of the language. Now when I have my students complete a research project, I make sure to tell them that using an article or video in another language is absolutely appropriate.

When my 10th graders were learning about how Covid-19 impacted the Thai economy, many of them used articles written in Thai, as they provided more nuanced and relevant details. In this way, we celebrated the students' multilingualism and dissolved the language hierarchy myth by showing students that content does not have to be learned in only one language.

2. Collaborating. Learning content by reading articles in students' languages works for students who are literate in other languages. For students who can only speak and understand their heritage language, learning content is still possible while collaborating with classmates who speak the same languages.

For example, when I had my students read an article in English about land subsidence, I had them pause at the end of each paragraph to talk about and process what they had just read. For many of my students, it was easier to understand the article when they talked about it in their Chinese, Thai, or Korean peer groups. Since learning is a social experience, let's have students learn using all of their languages.

3. Communicating ideas. Often, MLs have ideas swirling in their minds but struggle to formulate them in English. To support these students, we can have them first brainstorm, organize, and outline in their heritage languages. Forcing students to write or speak only in English is like putting speed bumps in their way. The goal is to have idea generation and to connect concepts at this stage, not English output. Once they have all of their ideas organized using their languages, we can support students to transfer these ideas into English.

With these three approaches to heritage language integration, we see that teachers do not have to know all of the languages their students speak. All teachers need to do is see students' multilingualism as an asset that extends learning and sustains students' connections to their communities. As MLs engage more through their languages, our eyes are opened to their potential.

Yes, many of us work in places that require English output on summatives, and state assessments are also in English. However, this does not mean that everything we do as teachers has to be monolingual. Think of languages as tools. If we only have a hammer, there's a limit to what we can construct. When we are free to use all of the linguistic tools from our toolbox, imagine all of the things that we can create.

Lastly, even if we cannot speak our students' languages, by welcoming them to use those languages we create a space where assets and cultures are recognized and honored. Years from now, when MLs may have forgotten what we've taught, they will still recall with affection how we made them feel. Start with embracing all languages in class.

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Incorporating Students' Native Languages to Enhance Their Learning

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Teachers don't have to speak students' first languages to make room for these languages in middle and high school classrooms.

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“First, recent meta-analyses have shown that educational programs that systematically incorporate use of ELLs' home language result in levels of academic success, including achievement in literacy and other academic subjects, that are as high as and often better than that of ELLs in English-only programs”

“Second, in a study of ELLs in two-way immersion programs, Lindholm and Aclan (1991) found a significant positive relationship between individual student's level of bilingual proficiency and their achievement in math and reading in English.”

“bilingual children exhibit significant cognitive advantages in comparison to monolingual children (e.g., Bialystok 2006; Chin & Wigglesworth, 2007; Kovaacs & Mehler, 2009). These advantages have been demonstrated in executive controlprocesses related to selective attention and inhibition and monitoring of attention when, for example, children are engaged in problem solving.”

“children who are learning to read in a second language are able to transfer many skills and knowledge from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. The best evidence of this comes from studies showing that students with strong reading skills in the home language also have strong reading skills in their second language”

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The Home Language: An English Language Learner’s Most Valuable Resource

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Fred Genesee discusses the research supporting the importance of a child’s home language. In addition, Dr. Genesee explores the question of why an approach that is well-supported by research has been largely ignored in the era of “research-based” policy.OverviewWebcast: ELLs and ReadingLearn more about using the home language to support ELLs’ reading instruction in our Teaching ELLs to Read webcast featuring Dr. Genesee!The education of English language learners (ELLs) is one of the most important issues facing U.S. educators. ELLs are a large and growing proportion of the school-age population — according to National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2007, about 10.8 million (or 20%) school-aged children in the U.S. spoke a language other than English at home (Planty, Hussar, Snyder, Kena, Kewal Ramani, Kemp, Bianco, & Dinkes, 2009). This situation is not likely to change because ELLs are currently the fastest growing population in U.S. schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004), with the number of ELLs expected to increase another 50% by 2025 (Passel & Cohn, 2008).The importance of the issues goes beyond the sheer number of ELLs, however. It has been shown in numerous national studies and surveys that, on average, ELLs under achieve in comparison to their English-speaking peers in academic domains and that the achievement gap tends to increase the higher the grade level (e.g., Fry, 2007; Rumberger, 2007; McNeil et al., 2008). As we consider ways to help ELLs increase their academic achievement, then, it is clear that educators need all the resources at their disposal to meet these challenges.Policy and Home LanguageUntil recently, significant efforts were made to enhance the educational outcomes of ELLs by offering alternative forms of education that incorporate use of ELLs’ home language (Genesee, 1999, for a review). These programs were justified on the grounds that educating ELLs in English only posed a triple threat to their educational success since it would require that they simultaneously:learn academic English to high levels,master challenging academic skills and content taught through English,adopt new social skills that would permit them to integrate with their English-speaking classmates and teachers.However, in recent years, recent political and legislative initiatives that disfavor bilingual education have made these educational options difficult to access, despite evidence of their success (Goldenberg, 2009). Along with these politically-motivated changes, it would appear that educators and policy-makers no longer recognize the native language skills of ELLs as an important educational resource and, indeed, it would even appear that they discredit it having any role in the education of ELLs.What does the research say?At the same time that the role of the home language is diminishing in public education policy, there have been growing political and legislative expectations that educational policies and classroom practices be backed up by scientific, empirical evidence. With respect to ELLs, there is undeniable and growing evidence that the home language of ELLs is of considerable benefit to their overall academic success. There are multiple sources of such evidence. First, recent meta-analyses have shown that educational programs that systematically incorporate use of ELLs’ home language result in levels of academic success, including achievement in literacy and other academic subjects, that are as high as and often better than that of ELLs in English-only programs (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, in press). In a review of these meta-analyses, Goldenberg (2008) notes “Readers should understand how unusual it is to have five meta-analyses on the same issue conducted by five independent researchers or groups of researchers with diverse perspectives. The fact that they all reached essentially the same conclusion is worth noting. No other area in educational research with which I am familiar can claim five independent meta-analyses based on experimental studies — much less five that converge on the same basic finding.” (p. 15).Second, in a study of ELLs in two-way immersion programs, Lindholm and Aclan (1991) found a significant positive relationship between individual student’s level of bilingual proficiency and their achievement in math and reading in English. Furthermore, the students who were classified as “high bilinguals” were able to attain grade level results by fourth grade in English reading and by third grade in English math.Third, a growing body of evidence from researchers around the world has shown that bilingual children exhibit significant cognitive advantages in comparison to monolingual children (e.g., Bialystok 2006; Chin & Wigglesworth, 2007; Kovaacs & Mehler, 2009). These advantages have been demonstrated in executive control processes related to selective attention and inhibition and monitoring of attention when, for example, children are engaged in problem solving.Fourth, and finally, extensive research, again from around the world, has found that children who are learning to read in a second language are able to transfer many skills and knowledge from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. The best evidence of this comes from studies showing that students with strong reading skills in the home language also have strong reading skills in their second language. Much of this work has been done on ELLs in the U.S. (August & Shanahan, 2006; Riches & Genesee, 2006).What we see in the U.S., then, is a push for research-based policy but the creation of policies that contradict the research. Debate concerning the value of using ELLs’ home language in specially-designed programs, such as two-way immersion, will undoubtedly continue, and so it should since it makes little educational sense to diminish U.S. students’ opportunities to become bilingual in an increasingly globalized community.Back to topHome Language in the ClassroomIn the meantime, teachers and students can’t wait for these policy debates to be settled before deciding how or whether to draw upon ELLs’ home language. The question arises how can schools and teachers, even those who are monolingual, act on evidence that clearly shows the personal, cognitive, linguistic and educational value of using the linguistic resources that ELLs bring to school. There is no simple or single answer to this question, but a number of options are worth exploring that, at the moment, are often overlooked and discounted. Cloud, Genesee, and Hamayan (2009, Chapter 3) offer a number of suggestions:To encourage students to see connections between their languages and, thus, to better understand how languages are structured and organized, talk to ELLs about their home language — ask them:How is the home language the same and how it is different from English?Are there words in the home language that sound the same and mean the same thing in both languages?Are there words in the home language and English that sound the same but mean different things?As part of phonological and metalinguistic awareness exercises to facilitate reading acquisition, ask students:to say words that start with the same sound(s) in English or the L1.how words are changed and formed in the home language — singular and plural forms, present tense and past tense forms of verbs — to enhance their word knowledgewho are new to your class, to read books in their home language to show you what they know about reading.By using the collective skills and knowledge of all students (both ELL and English-L1 students) in the classroom, even a monolingual teacher can tap into these valuable language resources that ELLs have and do so with the confidence that these methods will promote their language development — in English as well as the home language.Back to topEducation for AllA hallmark of public education in the U.S. is respect for and appreciation of the individual skills and backgrounds of students as a foundation for furthering their education. Taking advantage of ELLs’ home language resources is asking no more than the same respect and appreciation for this group of learners. At the same time, parents, teachers, educational leaders in local school districts, and politicians should discuss how best to provide all students in the U.S. with high quality educational programs that promote competence in additional languages. At stake is not only the competitiveness of individual students once they enter the work force but, indeed, the ability of the U.S. itself to compete in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world.Back to topVideo: Using the Home Language as a ResourceDearborn Public Schools ELD Director Rose Aldubaily discusses the value of using students’ home language as a resource. About the AuthorFred Genesee is Professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University, Montreal. He has conducted extensive research on alternative forms of bilingual and immersion education for language minority and language majority students. His current research interests also include language acquisition in pre-school bilingual children, internationally-adopted children, second language reading acquisition, and the language and academic development of students at-risk in bilingual programs. He is the recipient of the Canadian Psychological Associate Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community or Public Service and the 2-Way CABE Award of Promoting Bilingualism. Publications include:Genesee, F., Paradis, J., & Crago (Eds.) (2010). Dual Language Development and Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism and Second Language Learning, 2nd Edition. Baltimore, Maryland: Brookes Publishing.Cloud, N., Genesee, F., and Hamayan, E. (2009). Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners: A Teacher’s Guide to Research-Based Practices. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Back to topAcknowledgementsOur policy section is made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The statements and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

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“Using this strategy can help students:

Learn the content

Increase English proficiency

Maintain/improve their native languages

Improve cognition (e.g., delay the onset of dementia) and critical/comparative thinking skills

Increase access to content in other languages/from other cultures

Learn other languages/cultures

Transfer skills and knowledge from their native languages to facilitate English acquisition

Improve their social-emotional learning skills

Value their culture and heritage, which contributes to positive social-emotional well-being

Increase metalinguistic awareness”

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Native Language Use and Support - Accessibility Strategy

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Smarter Tools for Teachers. Discover classroom resources you can use today. Educator-created lessons, activities, strategies, and professional development to help tailor instruction and boost learning.

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Teachers can do many activities to support translanguaging. This can include students being assigned work to do together in English but using their home language(s) to decode the problems/tasks and helping each other understand, responding in their home langauge, etc. Students can be put in groups to show the class how something taught in English can make sense in another language like Spanish by identifying similarities and differences between the two languages.

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For years, research into the best instructional approaches for students identified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

Identified by bilingual education researcher Ofelia García, it's both a skill set and a total shift in the way language is thought of, used, and taught in K-12 classrooms where multiple languages are honored and addressed, even as English remains the dominant language of instruction, said Marybelle Marrero-Colon, the associate director of professional development for the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Researchers are looking into how it can be applied to formal assessments, such as state standardized tests on which English learners might struggle to demonstrate their academic proficiency because they are tested in an unfamiliar language.

Here's a look at what translanguaging means in the context of classroom instruction and how all educators, including monolingual English-speaking teachers, can cultivate spaces for translanguaging to occur.

Translanguaging is the ability to move fluidly between languages and a pedagogical approach to teaching in which teachers support this ability.

In translanguaging, students are able to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.

A student could be reading an article about the solar system in English, but in their brain, they are also thinking and making connections in Spanish. They might annotate in Spanish or first write down reading comprehension responses in Spanish and then figure out how to provide the responses in English, said Marrero-Colon.

It's all about encouraging students to access their full linguistic repertoires, said Emily Phillips Galloway, an assistant professor at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University.

Translanguaging is also multimodal. More research is underway, for instance, on hearing impaired translanguaging by students who are part of families with American sign language, Spanish sign language, and signs families create for themselves, said Maria Cieslak, the professional development content manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Teachers can engage in a variety of activities that deliberately encourage translanguaging, ranging from providing vocabulary in multiple languages to collaborative translation opportunities. The goal is to get students translanguaging as a practice that can be leveraged toward supporting literacy outcomes and engagement, as well as other academic endeavors.

For example, two students could be assigned to solve a word problem, and one might be stuck on a word in English. The two students can then use an equivalent word in their home language to make sense of what the word problem is asking of them, Phillips Galloway said.

Or in group activities, students can be prompted to share with the rest of the class how something taught in English would make sense in Spanish by highlighting similar and different grammatical structures between the two languages, Marrero-Colon said.

"When you translate, you don't have to do it word for word. You're really trying to capture the feeling of that text," Marrero-Colon said.

Once teachers start doing these activities, research has found that students who have not spoken before start speaking and students who were not as engaged in text-comprehension activities suddenly are, she added. That's occurring because they are being encouraged to use their home language in class to think about language use overall.

Translanguaging extends beyond translation to something where students gain an understanding of how language functions and works.

Although translation activities are a way to engage in translanguaging, it's not word-for-word translation. It's about a student using the words and thoughts they have in their home language to make sense of English and then be able to respond in English, said Kia Johnson, the director of PreK-12 language and literacy at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Translanguaging requires students to think about language components such as the placement of adjectives, what cognates are in various languages, and more in multiple languages at once, Phillips Galloway said.

Teachers don't have to speak the home languages of students to help them engage in translanguaging.

It does require teachers to be comfortable being a learner themselves as students teach them what they know about their own language. Some teachers may fear that students may engage in off-task behavior in languages the teachers don't understand, but research has found that in such cases, teachers are still able to register what is going on and get students back on task, Phillips Galloway said.

She also said that teachers who work in states with laws requiring English-only instruction can and should still allow students to use other languages in the classroom to help them access academic content.

The key, Marrero-Colon said, is flexibility. For instance, a student may need to write an essay in English. They can instead start with building a PowerPoint primarily of images that convey a story or meaning. The teacher can then use the PowerPoint to help students come up with words and phrases, then move to sentences and paragraphs, and so on.

All students can benefit from a classroom welcoming of translanguaging because few use academic English at home, regardless of their home language.

For instance, Black students may be fluent in African American Vernacular English and can use translanguaging activities to engage in academic classroom English, Johnson said.

An example of English-only translanguaging is asking students to turn William Shakespeare's sonnets into modern pop songs, because it is a use of language in different registers, or levels of formality, Phillips Galloway said.

Students are also more interested in acquiring more languages after hearing their peers use their home languages, which helps them succeed in an increasingly global society, she added.

The more opportunities students have to use language, whether that's English or not, breeds more language use, which is then associated with language learning.

"I think the mistake that we often make is that we don't help students to make the connections between the linguistic resources that they bring in languages other than English," Phillips Galloway said. "And in the course of doing that, we take a whole set of resources that could be used for comprehending texts as they read in English, or learn to write text in English, we take those resources off the table."

More research has found that allowing students to participate in translanguaging helps English learners eventually outperform their monolingual peers because they become more flexible in thinking about and using language in academic contexts, Marrero-Colon said.

Improved curriculum, professional development, and mindsets around the value of home languages can all help schools to encourage translanguaging and support students in the process.

Phillips Galloway is working with colleagues on a curriculum that better guides teachers in translanguaging activities since not all curricular materials recognize the concept.

Researchers at the Center for Applied Linguistics, including Cieslak, also work on professional development and policy discussions that help educators and policymakers alike understand how English learners bring with them linguistic assets that should be nurtured for overall academic success.

"It's about understanding cultural identity, and my language is part of my identity," Cieslak said. "And I'm going to naturally translanguage, whether you tell me I can or cannot."

Ileana Najarro is a reporter for Education Week covering race and opportunity in schools across the country.

A version of this article appeared in the August 16, 2023 edition of Education Week as What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?

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What Is Translanguaging and How Is It Used in the Classroom?

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Research into the best instructional approaches for students classified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

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In the clip, Laura Price discusses the importance of translanguaging. She says that the integration of these home languages gives feelings of cultural pride and acceptance to these students by not alienating them when tasked with only speaking English. By bringing their knowledge in their home language, it supports to learning of a new language such as English and helps them to understand and develop language skills better in English as well as their home language. This also helps incorporate their families who may only speak their home language. This can help the student and teachers get more support as well as form better relationships.

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Translanguaging: Utilizing Home Languages in Classroom Instruction

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This research article discussed how majority of students scores improved when given translingual tasks, assessments, etc. She also noticed an increase in confidence, feelings of empowerment and more meaningful dialogue amongst themselves.

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Translanguaging as pedagogy has four main goals: to support students academically, provide academic language practice opportunities, make space for multi-language ways of knowing, and support students’ social and emotional development as well as their identities.