Comprehensibility of Indonesian teachers’ translanguaging: Insights from higher education English classrooms

Abstract

The continuously refined definition of translanguaging potentially leads to classroom translanguaging practices whose benefits in EFL contexts are still debatable. Regarding translanguaging as a multilingual speakers’ strategy to draw linguistic features from their full repertoire to convey meaning, this study examined multilingual English teachers’ translanguaging practices in English classrooms and the comprehensibility of these practices. The teachers’ translanguaging practices were described based on qualitative data analysis of classroom observations and V-SRIs involving two teachers from an English department at a university in Indonesia. The comprehensibility of the teachers’ translanguaging practices was measured using a comprehensibility rating scale filled out by ten students who also noted down their responses to open-ended questions exploring factors contributing to their comprehension. The results showed that one teacher practiced translanguaging by drawing linguistic features from English and Indonesian, while the other drew from Javanese in their language repertoire. Three dominant translanguaging strategies were identified: alternating drawing in sustained speech, alternating drawing in minimal speech, and fluid drawing in sustained speech. The comprehensibility rating indicated that the teachers’ translanguaging in the first strategy was more intelligible than in the second strategy, while in the third strategy it was the least intelligible. Students’ judgments of the teachers’ capability in using English, confusion regarding the contexts of the topics discussed, and (un)supportive learning environments contributed to the comprehensibility of the teachers’ translanguaging practices. Hence, teachers’ awareness of their translanguaging practices and their effect on students’ comprehension of the material is urged.