Introduction
The emergence of English as a global language has brought different discourses and opinions about the role of bilingual instruction (e.g., Ulum, 2020). Despite “today’s classrooms being linguistically diverse, languages are kept separate during academic instruction” (Charamba, 2020, p. 118). In peripheral scenarios (Kachru, 2017) like Colombia, the English language continues to be taught by following methodological and instrumental principles that reproduce monolingual orientations. Even language policies and practices seem to follow this trend (Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero-Polo, 2021) that disregards the plurilingual realities, cognitively and epistemologically speaking, that learners and teachers encounter in varied educational scenarios.
Like several other countries in Latin America, Colombia has adopted language policies to spread English as a foreign language. Among the many actions, the Ministry of Education of Colombia (MEN), assisted by the British Council, runs its National Bilingualism Plan. For years, this plan has intended to improve English proficiency in the country. However, there is concern regarding the absence of a definition of bilingualism (Guerrero, 2010) in the local milieu since such a perspective reproduces English language instruction as the primary and only language spoken (Guerrero & Quintero, 2009). Without a doubt, learning English has been seen locally as a language of privilege (Guerrero, 2009), “positioned between national and global world orders” (Kramsch, 2019, p. 50), and “as an instrument of [linguistic, cultural, and onto-epistemological] domination” (Mignolo, 2003, p. 331).
Likewise, but not paradoxically, language teacher education programs have been immersed in these linguistic dynamics in which they have functioned as colonial machinery of the nation-state configuration. As “language has been used as a tool of domination, conquest, and colonization throughout history” (García, 2019, p. 152), educational research has been tethered to this colonizing genealogy (Patel, 2014) by reproducing discourses and practices in which only two English language varieties, American English and British English (e.g., Boonsuk, 2021; Dole, 2008; Martín Tévar, 2020), occupy a place of privilege. One can also find that non-native speakers’ linguistic preferences are thought to attain native-like linguistic and cultural identities (Wong, 2018). This has generated, consciously or unconsciously, an emerging negative self-image attached to the non-native condition (Aoyama, 2021), resulting in a set of norms that lead “non-native” speakers to feel vulnerable when showing their identities in English teaching.
This study then offers a window to document how two teachers of English do not conform with the native ideology by resorting to translanguaging as pedagogy. Their experiences teaching English as an international language and educating at the university level pose different arguments that recognize English language teaching as a dynamic, flexible linguistic practice that “cannot be circumscribed as a language system with a fixed set of describable linguistic features” (Moyer, 2016, p. 128). This manuscript adds my onto-epistemological decolonial stance by asking the readers of this issue to think of the possibilities of the resurgence and insurgence as venues to disrupt the ideologies and colonial practices surrounding English Language Teaching (Pennycook, 1998). It is my own attempt to “delink from the theoretical tenets and conceptual instruments” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 7) of Western/North and, at times, local thought.
Theoretical Framework
This study will employ the notions of translanguaging, English language pedagogy, and language teacher identity to go beyond reductive, instrumental, and functional views of the same terms. Figure 1 shows the identity of the colonized (the Other), not understood within a singular universal framework but by relating it to familiar and colonial stories enacted in English language pedagogy. At this juncture, translanguaging is the joint mechanism to explore possibilities of thinking and doing out of the mainstream conception of the terms. Not only does translanguaging represent a shift away from a framework that does not imagine languages out of their strict linguistic dimension but from a framework that does not conceive “identities [as] effective pedagogical tools” (Motha et al., 2012, p. 14). Translanguaging is then, in this study, represented with a cogwheel as it mobilizes backwards and forwards the analyses of the concepts above (Figure 1).
Language Teacher Identity
Identity is a complex term to define. It has been mainly linked to professional notions (Gu & Lai, 2019), for it seems to be pivotal in understanding how becoming a teacher involves identifying with the teaching profession (e.g., mainly about doing) and the kind of teacher one wants to be (e.g., mainly about knowing; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). Other approaches to teacher identity draw on the view that language is constitutive of-and constituted by-identity (Fairclough, 2003). Among these different lenses, identity has also been described as “cognitive, social, emotional, ideological, and historical” (Barkhuizen, 2017, p. 4). Unquestionably, as an analytical category, teacher identity is of immense interest.
Teacher identity has also been explored from bottom-up perspectives (see Ubaque-Casallas & Castañeda-Peña, 2020; Ubaque-Casallas, 2021) that have aimed to document far beyond the linguistic-disciplinary boundaries. Such initiatives are nested in a decolonial doing that engages, as I see it, in the “multiple meanings, and the desires and investments” (Andreotti et al., 2015, p. 22) that the decolonial option allows. This being said, language teacher identity emerges as an ongoing category situated in a colonial difference (Mignolo, 2000). It is “the ‘space’ in which those considered different from and inferior to ‘modern’ individuals [can] exert their agency to resist and challenge the hegemonic discourses of modernity/coloniality” (López-Gopar, 2016, p. 10).
As such, identity is not tied to any fixed or linear logic. Conversely, it challenges and detaches itself from the ELT theories and practices that emanate from the colonial powers (Pennycook, 1998). Therefore, teacher identity becomes a flexible and changing analytical category to explore English teachers’ ways of being and doing. Such an approach invites us to think of language teacher identity from the pluriverse (Grosfoguel, 2008) it entails.
Translanguaging
This study understands translanguaging as a theory and pedagogy (García & Wei, 2014). Although translanguaging theory has been widely adopted, “there is still some resistance to embracing it in pedagogy. Teachers in mainstream (English-only) classrooms may worry that students who are translanguaging may be doing so to the detriment of developing their English” (Hamman-Ortiz, 2019, p. 65). This preoccupation is also evident in teacher education programs where teachers and students continue to be trained in the use of communicative approaches (see Richards & Rodgers, 2001). As I see it, this has resulted in the reproduction of certain colonial ideologies that consider inferior non-Western/North forms of being and thinking.
Translanguaging is both a theory and a pedagogy that welcomes languages far beyond their systematic ways of being learned and used (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011). This implies that, since the language is not limited to instrumental or functional perspective (Richards & Rodgers, 2001), it becomes a space for individuals to use their linguistic, verbal, and visual resources, as these are their knowledge systems (García & Kleifgen, 2019). Translanguaging then allows for challenging discourses framed in monolingual perspectives and racial hierarchies. Arguably, translanguaging brings back the voices that have been hidden and rejected by monolingual and colonial ideologies.
All in all, translanguaging is a possibility to focus on the “different dimensions of [the individuals’] personal history, experience, and environment, their attitude, belief, and ideology” (Wei, 2011, p. 1223). Consequently, it is a wager to dislocate monolithic discourses about English language teaching and learning that reproduce the subaltern condition.
English Language Pedagogy
English language pedagogy should encourage students to draw from their linguistic resources (García & Kleifgen, 2010) and cannot be a notion that only accounts for procedural content. Instead, it should also be comprehended as a semiotic system that “an individual strategically accesses depending on the context” (Pacheco & Miller, 2016, p. 533). As such, it should not serve to reproduce colonial constructions of superior and inferior speakers (Pennycook, 1998), but it should allow them to use their linguistic repertoire to express who and how they are.
Traditional language pedagogy does not allow students to maximize and propel their repertoire as speakers (Ubaque-Casallas, 2023). Concerning this, a trans-language English pedagogy would imply a focus on “the whole linguistic repertoire, and the social context […] [as both imply] a transformation in comparison to traditional ideologies of language separation” (Cenoz & Gorter, 2020, p. 305). That said, viewing English language pedagogy in connection to the translanguaging lens means thinking about the transdisciplinary consequences of languaging (Mignolo, 2000); it hints at considering language as a fluid construct embedded in social, cultural, historical, and political contexts (Bloomaert, 2010).
English language pedagogy opens a procedural but onto-epistemological option to act decolonial-ontological as who we are is a pedagogical mechanism enacted in teaching (Morgan, 2004); and epistemological since it creates a rupture within theories and practices that can no longer be articulated with the colonial/modern roots of English language pedagogy. It is, in short, a form of inter-epistemic dialogue (Mignolo, 2007) that produces cracks and situates teachers’ own “place of location, agency, and everyday struggle” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 82).
Method
A narrative approach was adopted to document and comprehend the experiences of two teachers of English via the collection of their stories (Murray, 2009). In accordance with Clandinin (2013), who believed that any experience can be explored as an inquiry, this study was carried out with a narrative perspective that does not pursue the abstraction of the experiences but rather a personal decolonial doing to foster an ethical space of co-construction, co-interpretation, and horizontal co-authorship; a space of co-knowledge (De Sousa, 2017) and narrative knowledging (Barkhuizen, 2011). This approach “implied co-constructing a common place [among those who participated], a starting point in which we recognize ourselves, think about ourselves and reconfigure ourselves in a transformative action, intertwined in an ethical-political space of relationships” (Rivas-Flores et al., 2020, p. 59).
Narrative inquiry was selected since it fueled my attempt to exercise critical reflexivity. Relying on a narrative inquiry, then, implied an ontological and epistemological commitment (Caine et al., 2013) to open up spaces to build ethical possibilities to collaborate (Lessard et al., 2015). However, since how to go about narrative experiences is “far from agreed upon” (Barkhuizen, 2011, p. 390), I built my own narrative path to dialogue (Yang, 2015) and moved “from a posture of studying about to thinking with” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 28).
Context of the Study
This study results from partner-to-partner collaboration in a pedagogy class at a bachelor’s in English as a foreign language at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogotá, Colombia. Student teachers from the first-semester program interacted with two guest speakers who walked them through several readings and conversations about English and English language pedagogy. These speakers were both male teacher educators interested in dislocating colonial understandings and discourses about teaching in teacher education programs. This interest is also part of their struggle to make their voices heard. In a nutshell, they used their expertise to assist student-teachers in reflecting upon the analysis of disciplinary and socio-critical aspects of teaching English.
Student teachers were exposed to theoretically based readings and different teaching experiences to make sense of the importance of dislocating current paradigms in English language teaching and teacher education. The core emphasis in this seminar was on fostering “reading, interpretation, analysis, and reflection exercises on how education and pedagogy have been thought from an epistemic perspective” (Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, n. p). Thus, the collaboration in this academic space served as a venue to propose a dialogue to enrich initial visions and imaginations regarding English language teaching, teacher identity, and English language pedagogy.
Participants
This manuscript welcomed the voices and experiences of Liad and Karl . They participated in a twelve-month collaboration, two academic semesters, in which they shared their experiences, personal theories, and practices in a course seminar about language and pedagogy with first-semester students. Liad is an English teacher and educator who works for a public university. He holds a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics for tefl and is interested in exploring teacher education from the practicum perspective. Karl is an English teacher and educator who works for a private university. He is interested in decolonial pedagogies in education. He holds a master’s degree in Education. Both work for different teacher education programs and have more than ten years of experience educating student teachers. They agreed to collaborate with me in this seminar as we are all interested in challenging colonial discourses framed in monolingual onto-epistemological perspectives that are still validated in mainstream scenarios and continue to influence English language teaching and teacher education.
Inspection and Collection of Experiences
This study approached Liad and Karl’s experiences by finding themes. I chose to present themes that could be analyzed and explored in contrast to the analytical categories of the study (see
). This thematic narrative analysis allowed alternative narratives and events to emerge, offering a personal and collective relational encounter with the narrated experiences. This methodological decision also intended to build that narrative knowledge in which we (Liad, Karl, and I) could place ourselves in and through a transformative dialogue.As stated in this manuscript, I intended to co-construct the narratives, yet it was a co-construction that encompassed the deconstruction of our experiences (Zavala, 2016). With this, I did not seek coherence (White & Epston, 1990) but to engage in a decolonial perspective in which Liad, Karl, and I could build a “subject-subject relationships that [disrupted] […] the traditionally privileged position of the researcher” (Rivas-Flores et al., 2020, p. 57). In this sense, Liad and Karl were integrated and welcomed to comment on my own interpretation when inspecting conversations. Their collaboration occurred in three moments: first, after I transcribed the verbatim of our conversations since I needed to make sure I was being loyal to their words; second, when drafting my encounter with the verbatim to make sense of it; and lastly, before this manuscript was sent for evaluation, inasmuch as I needed their opinions on the overall sense.
The process was crucial at all stages as they, more than validated, guided my understanding of our conversations. They added some ideas to problematize areas I had not seen at first glance. Thanks to their willingness to assist me, I could engage in a co-constructed collective action (Fals-Borda, 1979) in which their ontologies and epistemologies built my own. In this sense, I must say that they acted as co-conductors of my line of interpretation. Such a line shows that they were not “merely objects of research to be extracted, captured, measured, and quantified” (Silva et al., 2022, p. 2), but they were active and engaged in re-articulating my interpretations. It is worth mentioning that although all conversations were collected in Spanish and audio-recorded, the privacy of conversations was guaranteed using a consent form. We did not see this as a mechanism of epistemological control but as a possibility to, as Ortiz Ocaña and Arias López put it, “intentionally configure knowledge or simply to decolonize to live in communality” (2019, p. 159). It was an opportunity, as the authors would say, “that included the other cared for him, protected him, welcomed him, loved him.” As such, all conversations were transcribed to be further converted into themes. Our encounters were also analyzed using specialized qualitative data analysis software called InVivo. This software assisted me in the identification of themes and their relationships with the analytical categories of the study (translanguaging, language pedagogy, and language teacher identity).
During the inspection of the verbatim, themes that emerged were classed into categories and subcategories. However, this manuscript reports only two themes: I am not and cannot be a native speaker; please, English only. They are accompanied by original extracts (translated into English) to account for the unique views and experiences Liad and Karl narrated.
Liad’s and Karl´s Experiences
The reported analysis discusses Liad and Karl’s pedagogical experiences, insights into teaching English in Colombia, and reflections on their collaboration. Therefore, in the forthcoming examination, I discuss two main themes, accompanied by a chosen excerpt, to analyze how they do not conform with the notion of native ideology in English language teaching by resorting to a translanguaging pedagogy. I also discuss their pedagogical experiences and insights teaching English in Colombia within their teacher education programs and this study’s collaboration. Finally, I explore how they use their linguistic repertoire as a mechanism to teach and challenge discourses framed in monolingual perspectives.
I Am Not and Cannot Be a Native Speaker
TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) have re/produced colonial discourses of superiority and inferiority among speakers (Pennycook, 1998). This separation has occurred through notions such as race and language; the latter constructed by imposed epistemological and ontological dominance over teaching methodologies (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) and installed discourses on how to be an English speaker.
When conversing with Liad and Karl about their opinions on their identity as “non-native” English language teachers, they seemed to be quite aware of this subalternizing label in their teaching experiences. For Liad, this subaltern condition (Núñez-Pardo, 2020) has been brought about by the educational system where he is immersed and by discourses his students bring-discourses that have emerged from neo-colonial principles in which languages are mere resources not for their cultural value but their exchange value (Heller & Duchene, 2012). Interestingly, Liad situates his own identity as speaker and teacher in this same line of thought, intersecting students’ notions in the teacher education program and the collaboration seminar he participated in. The following excerpt opens a path of analysis to elaborate on this.
When we start the semester at university, the students always tell me to work on pronunciation. They tell me, “We want to work on British or American English;” and I tell them that I cannot do so since English does not come from those two places. I refute them by asking, “What English do you want to speak? An English from the south of the United States, from the north, a native English of American Indians, an Afro-English, a street English?” Furthermore, they have not dimensioned that English is not something that only belongs to the United States or the British. I think we have spoken about the possibility of speaking English in Colombia without being or looking like these models. However, it is complicated; we always have a monitor who comes from another country here at the university, and the boys say they want to be like this person because he speaks very well, pronounces very well-they say his accent is the best, and so on. (Liad, first semester 2022)
Liad resists, pedagogically and ideologically, reproducing colonial discourses in which the native-speaker ideology has been predominant (Holliday, 2005). Considering that “no language pedagogy is neutral” (Ubaque-Casallas, 2021, p. 47), Liad seems to interrogate his students’ discourses by stating that “English does not come from those two places;” places in which the English language is a language of privilege (Kachru, 1992). He opens the door for students to consider that within the local context, “we can speak English in Colombia without being or looking like these models.” This possibility of being an English speaker, not tied to the colonial construction imposed on English speakers, is a valid path to disrupting fixed notions and discourses concerning language use among those labeled as “non-native.”
However, one must acknowledge that the role of hegemonic accents (i.e., American and British) has also been linked to the notion of trustworthiness as they influence credibility (Lev et al., 2018). In Liad’s experience, this is also a category brought by students to identify superiority in the way others may see a speaker, that is, “they want to be like this person because he speaks very well, pronounces very well, they say his accent is the best.” Although this may not necessarily be a colonial construction, as opinions are based on beliefs, it cannot be denied that students and teachers seem to adhere to these constructions within the teaching of English dynamics. Even publishing houses use these imaginaries to reproduce a misinterpretation of “the plurality of the local and foreign cultures” (Núñez-Pardo, 2018, p. 1) in texts and materials. I will expound on this assumption in the excerpt below.
I think the native thing is something that has been given to us in textbooks. These big publishing houses impose a model of ideal being and reinforce it with the lesson’s structure if you think about it. For example, look at a lesson from a [name of the series deleted] book. You have a PPP (Presentation, Practice, and Production) model for structuring the lesson. In linguistics, they give you grammar, practice it, produce it, and reinforce you with a phonetic theme. For example, they tell you how to pronounce “can” and give you these phonetic symbols [drawn in the conversation / kən-kæn /], and you often see that […][some American native speakers] themselves do not even follow that. So that kind of practice limits a lot concerning what you can do when communicating. They impose a model on you. Be careful here; I am not saying that we should not teach pronunciation. I am saying that we must be more open to ways of speaking. Look at Colombia. I am from the coast, and my Spanish is not the same as yours. The same thing happens in English. (Liad, first semester 2022)
It cannot be denied that the hegemonic ideology of the native speaker (Faez, 2011) is present in the ELT field. Although there has been an evident epistemological criticism (Kumaravadivelu, 2014), I consider that not much has been said regarding the ontological dimension. Paradoxically, both teacher education programs and English language classrooms keep reproducing “English language teaching and learning identities [that] are more oriented towards that goal of identifying decontextualized forms of being in the field of teaching” (Castañeda-Peña, 2018, p. 18). The aforesaid may explain why other dimensions of identity, such as gender identity (e.g., Galen, 2010; Engebretson, 2016) and black teacher identities (Milner, 2020), among many others, are barely discussed. Being this the panorama, it is evident that there is still a colonial discourse regarding language teacher identities that continues reproducing colonial histories. However, it also continues “breaking the link between the subject[s] of enunciation and the ethnic/racial/sexual/gender/epistemic place [they occupy]” (Grosfoguel, 2010, p. 459).
For Karl, his situation is not that different. Karl also identifies as a speaker and an English teacher. Although his voice does not intersect with students’ notions, he acknowledges that part of being a “successful teacher” comes from adapting to certain ideologies; the native/non-native dichotomy among some. However, his strategy “encapsulates the conceptualization of teacher identity as pedagogy” (Aoyama, 2021, p. 2). The following excerpt opens a path to elaborate on this.
I believe that one teaches what one is. In your class, for example. Most boys know that they can use Spanish and that this prohibition in classes is absurd. For example, I speak English, French, and Spanish. I do not only use English in my classes. Yesterday, for example, I spoke of hidden cities; this was the book’s theme. And I opened with a video of Paris and its catacombs; this was in French, and the headings were in English. The boys then chatted about it in Spanish. And then we talked about it in Spanish. At no time did I tell them, “don’t do it.” Now that I think about it, in today’s class with these boys, they have the same prohibition in their classes. If you realize they also have these models of “if it’s not American, it’s British,” that is for me an opportunity to disrupt, an opportunity we should take advantage of; but I believe that it is done by being, not by doing. (Karl, first semester 2022)
Individuals are subjected to discursive practices in their community or culture (Baxter, 2016). These discourses are also nested in mainstream English language teaching programs in which non-native English-speaking teachers like Karl are, directly or indirectly, subjected to linguistic discrimination (Rudolph et al., 2015). Such discrimination is present in the language varieties to be learned and taught and in the linguistic ideology used to maintain the subaltern condition on English language teachers. As a result, it has translated into a monolithic ontology that makes Karl’s acknowledgment an invisible form identity as pedagogy. However, this same recognition is what dislocates the static ontology mentioned above. In Karl’s own words, “that is, for me, an opportunity to disrupt, an opportunity we should take advantage of; but I believe that it is done by being, not by doing.”
For Karl, languages must be seen horizontally, not vertically, without hierarchies. He shared a teaching practice where languages were not just seen as linguistic systems in his narration.
I opened with a video of Paris and its catacombs; this was in French, and the headings were in English. The boys then chatted about it in Spanish. And then we talked about it in Spanish. At no time did I tell them, “Don’t do it.” (Karl, first semester 2022)
Interesting, native norms would consider this teaching approach a “deviation [that] denotes a lack of proficiency” (Lai, 2020, p. 494). Conversely, Karl’s pedagogy allows students to do language, not from a single linguistic perspective, but to do languages from the repertoire they possess. Nevertheless, since discourses about English language pedagogy are still rooted in colonial architecture (Ubaque-Casallas, 2021), Karl’s experience and positioning may open a broader perspective to interrogate pedagogy as a colonial political praxis (Madge et al., 2009) in which teachers’ own practices and epistemologies are still embedded. The following fragment triggers such reflection.
In your seminar, I realized that my classes have something interesting. When I did my activity and we reflected on the use of Spanish in classes, be it in English classrooms or at the bachelor’s, one always gets to focus on competences. It is strange because one would expect that Spanish would not be used at advanced levels, but in my experience and as you realized, when talking about the catacombs, the boys used some words not to stop talking. That is important. I don’t know how this would be understood from the methods I’ve used so far, but I don’t think it fits into any of them. (Karl, first semester 2022)
Karl’s reflection reshapes his own approach to teaching. In this respect, Núñez et al. (2015) contend that reflection leads to methodological improvement. Although Karl’s language pedagogy does not seem to detach from the traditional teaching methodologies he has used, he realizes that incorporating Spanish to foster communication in English may not fit into any of those theoretical-based practices he has engaged in. In his own words, “I don’t know how this would be understood from the methods I’ve used so far, but I don’t think it fits into any of them.” Arguably, mainstream methodologies do not account for translanguaging perspectives in which languages are seen horizontally, without labels of prestige.
Please, English Only
When it comes to “English only,” students’ and teachers’ use of their mother tongue to learn other languages has for many years been under debate. Whether it is valid or not depends on the scenario where L1 is implemented. For example, English teachers and educators have been instructed not to allow the use of L1, and as a result, students have been submitted to this monolingual prohibition. There seem to be negative connotations that have depicted L1 as a forbidden fruit (Fortune, 2012).
In Liad’s experience, these discourses about using L1 are also evident. In the following fragments, I use his expertise to dislocate discourses on L1 use and connect it to the translanguaging scope of this manuscript.
At the university, they always tell you, “do not use Spanish,” and you assume that is the way it is. So far, you have made me think about this. In my classes before, I used to say, “Spanish is not valid; if you speak Spanish, you put a coin in the piggy bank as a penance,” and with time, you realize that Spanish is a handy resource. The first-semester boys here use Spanish. They do so not because they do not know how to speak English. For me, it is already part of what they are, and I find it very interesting because this generation of teachers is not as static as mine was in those things. (Liad, second semester 2022)
Liad makes evident prohibition discourses in teacher education programs. For example, she was exposed to a prohibition discourse in which Spanish was neither a linguistic option nor a pedagogical tool to improve English language learning. This is the truth Liad was led to believe. Although one does not deny that English teacher education programs were founded on hegemonic Euro-American-centric values (Battiste, 2002), such as methods and methodologies, it seems paradoxical and arbitrary to continue finding these discourses nowadays.
Liad identifies the ontological dimension of language by resisting practices and discourses that separate the individual from it. In his own words, “They do so not because they do not know how to speak English. For me, it is already part of what they are.” Interestingly, from a translanguaging lens, using Spanish “is not linguistically confused or demonstrating ‘bad’ Spanish or English. Instead, [that the student] is leveraging his entire linguistic repertoire to communicate” (Hamman-Ortiz, 2019, p. 65). In this respect, translanguaging becomes a liberatory practice in which Liad engages in an intentional trans-formative pedagogy by acknowledging his students’ repertoire (Cummins, 2000) and strives for what Freire (1993) referred to as conscientização.
Liad keeps sharing his experience and, as an English language teacher, cannot avoid referring to the notion of methodology. The fragment below intends to trigger some analysis concerning English language teaching.
As for the methodology, you will not find a method that tells you to teach alternating with Spanish. I am honest with you, I love using CLIL, but you also have theoretical principles that only English environments impose on you. However, I try to open spaces for the Spanish to enter as they are there. One cannot take from the boys something that is theirs. Spanish is what they already are. (Liad, second semester 2022)
Although “most of the efl teachers claim to allow their students to use the L1 in class to encourage students’ natural thought processes and creativity, as well as for speed and ease” (Fortune, 2012, p. 80), the reality is that the theoretical principles English language teaching practices and theories are based on contradict the practice above. These account for theoretical and procedural knowledge that addresses language’s linguistic and cognitive process regarding methods and methodologies. However, as Liad proposes, “we are obligated to rethink language-separatist practices, which deny students the opportunity to do bilingualism and ignore their lived communicative experiences.” (Hamman-Ortiz, 2019, p. 66). Such commitment does not necessarily have to contradict teaching practices, but it must call for changing how languages, their linguistic and semiotic repertoires, are used in the classroom. Our language is part of who we are (Ascenzi & Quiñones, 2020).
In Karl’s experience, discourses about L1 are also mobilized. Karl also speaks about what he has learned. His learning has to do with the possibility of opening room to recognize who the other is. The fragment below elaborates on this.
I have learned that your classes cannot happen if you do not recognize what students already are. Look, I have given English classes to indigenous people, and they speak their language, Spanish and English. It would be very ignorant of me to think that they do not know anything and that English is the only thing they should use. With these guys, I learned that your L1 as we learn it in the academic setting is not something apart. It is like a bridge to learning other languages and ways of reading the world. (Karl, second semester 2022)
As it is true that L1 can be a bridge to learning other languages and ways of reading the world, languaging practices that dislocate the static and universalizing linguistic identity already imposed on teachers and learners can provide a fresh perspective to think about bilingual models and challenge the “unequal distribution of material and symbolic resources” (Guerrero, 2010, p. 176) that have been imposed in language teaching practices. As a matter of fact, by perceiving the language as a bridge, different cosmovisions are welcomed into language practices in the classroom. Language pedagogy, per se, becomes a mechanism that a) promotes insurgent practices of resisting (Walsh, 2017) both inside and outside of the double-monolingual paradigm of English language classrooms and b) exercises a praxis of decolonial orientation that confronts the racist myth of native speakerism (Holliday, 2006).
When discussing the collaboration he participated in and his contribution to teacher education, Karl argues that traditional ELT is based on colonial norms. These norms have led to the incorporation of syllabi in which teachers’ and learners’ competence is often evaluated according to standard English (Fang, 2018). This argument is explored in Karl’s experience.
I think the problem is that one does not move away from competencies. We have to be C1; we have to implement methodologies such as CLIL, flipped learning, etc. And that is simple in an English-only classroom, but when you educate teachers, things are more complex. You can’t tell them that what the programs teach is colonial; they often reproduce these speeches themselves. They say like, “that teacher mispronounces,” “hey, he’s a native, he should speak better.” Imagine if one tells them that Spanish helps learn English. Pedagogy at the undergraduate level is uncertain because the university still asks you for skills. The pedagogical aspect is not yet separated from the traditional dimension. This is why I think context is critical. (Karl, second semester 2022)
Karl’s view may originate in the assumption that teacher education programs have not promoted understanding of what a multilingual pedagogy entails (Otwinowska, 2017). For instance, the Colombian English language teaching field imported methodologies like “Grammar-Translation Approach, Audiolingual Approach, Direct Method, Communicative Approach, Task-Based Language Learning, and Teaching have all been successively adopted without any real contextualization” (Le Gal, 2018, p. 159) or analysis about the implications when imposing their theoretical principles.
Arguably, there are evident colonial roots inserted in teaching practices and ideologies. However, using Karl’s words “context is key,” more practices that dislocate current paradigms and ideologies need to be fostered and documented to displace normative/modern discourses that keep English as a language of privilege and as a monolithic linguistic system.
Conclusions
Any classroom in which a language is learned must be linguistically diverse. Languages cannot be separated; teachers’ and learners’ pedagogic resources go beyond any fixed linguistic repertoire. Thus, as this study used the experiences of Liad and Karl to explore how they used their linguistic repertoire as a mechanism to teach and their discourses as non-native speakers to resignify their own identities as English language teachers, the following conclusions are not to be taken as definite findings. Instead, these present particular insights for questioning language teaching perspectives and teacher identities.
Without a doubt, translanguaging as a theory and pedagogy “enhances the process of teaching and learning as well as offers freedom to both learners and teachers in the choice of language” (Romanowski, 2020, p. 163). However, such enhancement occurs not only at the linguistic level but also at an ontological one. As documented in this study, it is vital to continue reflecting upon the language practices in teaching English scenarios and teacher education programs to dislocate and change colonial paradigms about English teaching. Echoing Aoyama (2021), “the catalyst for this change would be the reconceptualization of the roles of professional language teachers with the increased sensitivity to the complex and changing sociolinguistic realities of English in today’s world” (p. 13). In so doing, the incorporation of languages as semiotic possibilities for students and teachers to deploy their identity can become a pedagogical tool to resignify English language teaching and teacher education.
Monolingual perspectives about teaching are being questioned. On this, a counter-nonnative ideology emerges to allow teachers and students to reclaim their identities. For Liad and Karl, we are what we do, teach, and use to reflect upon our own pedagogical and linguistic practices. Therefore, classroom practices cannot continue to be tied to neoliberal/modern paradigms of thought. They need to become liberatory and self-constructed mechanisms to resist dominant and oppressive ideologies as it is in our practices and beliefs that we can dislocate and challenge subalternized identities. All in all, translanguaging is not only a theory but a pedagogical tool that encapsulates one’s self and ideology of teaching.