to key issues regarding language arrangements in bilingual schools at the
beginning of the 21st century.
To allow pupils to make progress in both languages, the teacher needs to
plan the strategic use of two languages with consideration to key translan-
guaging variables including:
- the language profile of pupils;
- the language balance of the classroom;
- the allocation of languages in the curriculum;
- the age of pupils;
- the competence of pupils in L1 and L2;
- the language profile of the teacher/teaching assistants;
- the language of curriculum resources;
- the status of the languages (minority/majority languages):
- aims of the school.
(See also Baker, 2008: 107).
While the flexible use of translanguaging is evident in classrooms through-
out Wales with emphasis placed on using English sources (majority language)
to develop pupils’ language competence in Welsh (minority language), less
evident is the practice of using Welsh sources to develop pupils’ English lan-
guage skills. This contrasts with translanguaging pedagogies in other coun-
tries, for example, translanguaging from Spanish to develop English in
classrooms in New York City, thus according to García and Kleifgen (2010:
63) ‘building... English proficiency using the home language as a scaffold’.
In bilingual schools in Wales, minority language pupils (Welsh first lan-
guage) and majority language pupils (English first language) are present in most
classrooms (as well as pupils from ethnic backgrounds) and teachers need to
ensure that some translanguaging activities are ‘planned’ to develop all pupils’
competence in both languages. Teachers often remind the pupils to alternate
the language medium during the translanguaging activity in the classroom,
that is, to alternate the language of input and output. For example, in one his-
tory lesson the pupils could read English material and write in Welsh and in the
following lesson they could read Welsh material and write in English.
The translanguaging model (Lewis, 2008; Jones, 2010) discussed in this
chapter with emphasis on alternate language use in a bilingual classroom can
be adapted to a multilingual context. For example, the input medium (recep-
tive language skills of listening and reading) and/or output medium (produc-
tive language skills of speaking and writing) could include two or more
languages. A pupil could read English and French information and discuss
the content in Welsh. This ability to translanguage in order ‘to make sense
of multilingual encounters’ is characteristic of dynamic bilingualism and is
considered as ‘the most coveted language ability’ in the 21st century (García,
2011: 148).
Language Arrangements within Bilingual Education 169