Lecturers’ translanguaging practices in English-taught lectures in Turkey

Authors

  • Eda Genc Ministry of National Education, Turkey
  • Dogan Yuksel The Open University
  • Samantha Curle University of Bath

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.23945

Keywords:

English Medium Instruction (EMI), social functions of language, technical translation, translanguaging, Turkey

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study investigating lecturers’ translanguaging practices in English medium instruction (EMI) courses in a Turkish higher education setting. Specifically, a comprehensive investigation of the functions of translanguaging used by lecturers was conducted following Lo’s and Sahan and Rose’s frameworks, which propose pedagogical and social and affective functions. Eighteen hours of EMI lectures from eight different classes were video recorded. The findings demonstrate that lecturers and students used translanguaging mainly for content transmission (a pedagogical function subcategory) by translating technical terminology, presenting new content, and asking and/or answering content-related questions. The lecturers also used translanguaging to encourage student participation and for social and affective functions, such as establishing rapport. These functions have also been observed in previous studies in various EMI settings; however, our analyses highlighted new context-specific differences. This study elaborates these innovative differences, as well as the pedagogical implications of these original findings.

Author Biographies

  • Eda Genc, Ministry of National Education, Turkey

    Eda Genc teaches English in a high school in Turkey. She completed her MA degree in Kocaeli University’s TEFL programme. Her research interests lie in the growing use of English-medium instruction in Turkish higher education, particularly examining the discourse of classroom talk in EMI settings.

  • Dogan Yuksel, The Open University

    Dogan Yuksel is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies at The Open University, United Kingdom. Previously, he worked as an Associate Professor of TEFL at Kocaeli University, Turkey. His main areas of interest are classroom discourse, EMI and teacher education.

  • Samantha Curle, University of Bath

    Samantha Curle is a Reader in Education (Applied Linguistics) and Director of the MRes programme in Advanced Quantitative Research Methods at the University of Bath, and an Associate Member of the English Medium Instruction Oxford Research Group at the University of Oxford. Her main research interest lies in factors affecting academic achievement in EMI in higher education.

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Published

2023-04-24

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Genc, E., Yuksel, D., & Curle, S. (2023). Lecturers’ translanguaging practices in English-taught lectures in Turkey. Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices, 4(1), 8-31. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.23945