A Pedagogical Translanguaging Proposal for Trainee Teachers

Abstract

Pre-service teachers in Spain play a pivotal role in the multilingual turn in education. While research has confirmed the benefits of using pedagogical translanguaging in developing learners’ multilingual competence, practical examples of its implementation within teacher training courses remain scarce. Considering this gap, this teaching proposal aims to address the lack of classroom-based examples and employs translanguaging pedagogy as a frame of reference to enhance first-year preschool trainee teachers’ English communicative competence at the University Jaume I (Castelló, Spain). In this way, learners’ language awareness will be improved by using the languages that form their whole language repertoire alongside their linguistic experiences to deepen their understanding of English. The development of planned teaching strategies and multilingual activities is expected to foster prospective teachers’ multilingual competence and inform their future teaching practice.

1. Introduction

The number of English-medium instruction courses offered at Spanish universities is on the rise since promoting today’s lingua franca is one of the main objectives of the European Higher Education Area (Martí & Guzmán-Alcón, 2024). Multilingual students, who are a global norm, are unrecognized and ignored in those immersion programs, which only allow English and are characterized by a monolingual bias. The university needs to lead the multilingual turn proposed by May (2013) by making approaches more holistic and encouraging learners to use their full linguistic repertoire. The multilingual turn in education has emphasised the importance of training pre-service teachers through multilingual pedagogies that integrate students’ language repertoire. Leonet, Cenoz (2017) refer to the strategic multilingual practices used inside the classroom as pedagogical translanguaging. Over the last decade, this concept has significantly gained importance to describe “a pedagogic theory and practice that refers to instructional strategies which integrate two or more languages” (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021, p. 18).

Several studies have confirmed the benefits of using a multilingual approach in the classroom setting (see Tai, 2024, for a recent revision). However, on a practical level, translanguaging pedagogy has not been adequately translated into the classroom, and the approach used in language teaching remains largely monolingual at all educational stages. In light of the insufficient practical guidance, the purpose of this paper is to provide a teaching proposal based on translanguaging pedagogy as a frame of reference for developing learners’ multilingual competence through planned teaching strategies and activities at the university level. This approach will be applied to all dimensions of the communicative competence construct and will consist of drawing on the similarities and differences between languages. In this way, we will develop learners’ language awareness by using the languages that make up their language repertoire and linguistic experience to build linguistic knowledge of the English language.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Section two defines translanguaging and includes a revision of the benefits and applications of pedagogical translanguaging in the classroom. In the third section, we present a teaching proposal for the course “English Language” based on pedagogical translanguaging and aimed at students enrolled in the degree in preschool education. Then, section four discusses the relevance of this teaching proposal and offers some concluding remarks. Lastly, the tasks included in this pedagogical approach are included in the Appendix A.

2. Literature Review

Multilingual speakers have been overlooked in the classroom, as traditional research has not considered their language repertoire and previous language experience when teaching. Authors, such as Cenoz and Gorter (2011, 2020), claim that multilingual students should be treated through a multilingual lens by considering three main dimensions: the multilingual speaker, the language repertoire, and the social context. People who speak two or more languages use their language resources strategically in any communicative situation “to act, to know, and to be”, as claimed by García and Wei (2014, p. 137). This fluid use of languages has been coined as translanguaging.

This popular term in research has been described as “the communicative norm of multilingual communities (García & Sylvan, 2011, p. 389) and as a “communicative resource for the twenty-first century” (García & Hesson, 2015, p. 230). Williams (1994) introduced this concept in Wales by referring to the pedagogical strategy that systematically uses English and Welsh to achieve proficiency in both languages inside the classroom while enhancing the understanding of the content matter. Canagarajah (2011, p. 401) prefers the term of translingual practices to refer to “the ability of multilingual speakers to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system”. In other words, translanguaging, or translingual practices, may be defined as the ability of multilingual speakers to navigate between languages by flexibly, strategically, and effectively using the different linguistic and non-linguistic resources that form a single unified linguistic repertoire.

Translanguaging represents a change from monolingualism to multilingualism, embracing the principles of the multilingual turn in education proposed by May (2013). This multilingual turn avoids language separation in the classroom, softens the boundaries between languages, and reduces the rigidity of the one-language, one-subject rule. This approach advocates for a more integrative, dynamic, and holistic way of learning and teaching, as languages interact in a multilingual mind. According to Wlosowicz (2020), “languages in the bilingual or multilingual mind are not stored in isolation, but there is a certain degree of interconnection between them” (p. 139). In this vein, speakers may draw on all their language resources in any communicative situation to enhance their communicative potential (García, 2009).

Cenoz (2017) distinguished between two types of translanguaging: spontaneous and pedagogical. The former refers to “the reality to multilingual usage in naturally occurring context where boundaries between languages are fluid and constantly shifting (Cenoz, 2017, p. 7). The latter consists of “planned instructional strategies used with a pedagogical purpose” (Leonet et al., 2017, p. 219) and aims at “using the resources students have as emergent multilinguals when developing their competences in different languages” (Leonet et al., 2017, p. 219). Therefore, pedagogical translanguaging involves teaching languages together rather than separately, in a systematic, planned, and organised manner with a specific pedagogical purpose.

Pedagogical translanguaging has arisen as an alternative to traditional pedagogies, abandoning monolingual pedagogies ruled by the premise of the ideal native speaker. It involves “flexible crosslinguistic boundaries that actively promote synergies between the different languages” (Cummins, 2021, p. 292). Learning multilingually through translanguaging pedagogies involves using cross-linguistic instruction, scaffolding techniques, labels, translations, multimodal resources, free flow of languages, input and output techniques, and use of cognates, among many others. In addition to those multilingual practices, pedagogical translanguaging is “closely aligned with the values of integrating multiple languages, promoting equality, and acquiring knowledge in a non-hierarchical or discriminatory way” (Vetter & Slavkok, 2022, p. 7). This approach may challenge the existing hierarchies among languages and overcome monolingual ideologies in education, contributing to social justice and equity. The study by Franck and Papadopoulou (2024) highlights the socioemotional benefits of using pedagogical translanguaging for migrant education.

Existing research has confirmed that learners’ language awareness is developed by becoming aware of the resources available to them in their linguistic repertoire at all levels. We found studies that improve phonological (García et al., 2017), morphological (Leonet et al., 2020), lexical (Galante, 2020b; Leonet & Saragueta, 2023; Lyster et al., 2013), syntactic (Hopp & Thoma, 2021), discursive (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011; Cenoz & Santos, 2020; Llanes & Cots, 2022), and pragmatic levels (Portolés & Gayete, 2024). Some studies (Cenoz & Santos, 2020; Galante, 2020a; Yasar Yuzlu & Dikilitas, 2021) have also proven how secondary and tertiary students improved their ability to read, listen, speak, and write after implementing a pedagogical translanguaging approach. These findings suggest that the four language skills may be enhanced through multilingual pedagogies.

Most of the studies above, including instructional treatments on translanguaging pedagogy, broadly describe the multilingual practices implemented. They offer a preliminary idea of the possible activities that can be implemented, but they do not show the actual activities. We have found few manuals or illustrative examples of how to implement a translingual pedagogy. For instance, some useful guides have been derived from the work conducted by the CUNY-NYSIEB project (Celic & Seltzer, 2013; Ebe, 2019; García et al., 2017). These guides provide plenty of activities to implement pedagogical translanguaging in multilingual, diverse classrooms. García and Wei (2014, p. 120) propose activities such as “word walls, sentence starters, cognates, comparing multilingual texts, multilingual vocabulary inquiry, and multilingual syntax/morphology inquiry”.

The work conducted by Cenoz and Gorter (2020, 2021) is also a significant contribution to the development of translanguaging materials. These authors distinguish between four categories of pedagogical practices: enhancing metalinguistic awareness, use of the whole linguistic repertoire, integrated linguistic curriculum, and translanguaging shifts. According to Cenoz and Gorter (2021), enhancing metalinguistic awareness is the strongest form of implementing pedagogical translanguaging, and translanguaging shifts would be the weakest.

Enhancing metalinguistic awareness involves using strategies to encourage students to notice similarities and differences between their languages. This cross-linguistic reflection fosters a deeper understanding of how language works and helps students raise language awareness by making conscious choices. Activities in this category include grammatical comparisons, cognate study, derivatives and compounding, discourse and pragmatic differences, or any form of contrastive analysis task that compares linguistic features across various languages. Use of a whole language repertoire encourages students to use all the languages they know as valuable resources for learning. This practice enables the use of different languages for completing tasks (e.g., brainstorming in the L1 and writing in the L3, reviewing content in the L2 and speaking in the L3, finding information in different languages, creating multilingual presentations, etc.). This practice moves away from the traditional and artificial separation of languages in the classroom. Instead, it uses the whole language repertoire not only for effective communication but also as social justice. The inclusion and validation of all the languages in multilingual diverse classrooms fosters a sense of belonging, creates equitable educational environments, and strengthens their multilingual identity. The third category, integrated language curriculum, requires coordination across language lessons. While the target language might be the primary medium of instruction in a given course, the principle of integration avoids unnecessary repetition of content or skills across the syllabi of the different language subjects. For instance, instead of teaching the passive form in isolation in each language class, teachers could carefully plan a coordinated series of lessons to highlight language-specific nuances and explore cross-linguistic similarities and differences in its formation. The fourth and last practice is translanguaging shifts. Unlike previous practices, which are pedagogically planned, these shifts emerge spontaneously in the classroom. Both teachers and students may flexibly use their full language repertoire to clarify, elaborate on, or address any communicative need within the classroom discourse. For example, when a student does not understand a word in the text, the teacher or a classmate can provide a quick translation.

Assessing multilingual practices remains a significant challenge within this multilingual turn, as language evaluation still uses the native speaker as a reference point (Llurda, 2020, p. 214). It is necessary to create instruments that assess learners’ multicompetence holistically, rather than examining the separate competences of each language in their linguistic repertoire by comparison to native speakers. Several authors (see Gorter & Cenoz, 2017; de Angelis, 2021) have proposed more comprehensive and dynamic instruments that examine multilingual competence in a more integrative way. Furthermore, the Council of Europe’s updated Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)—Companion Volume (Council of Europe, 2020) contemplates the multilingual approach and moves away from the native speaker label. The rigid monolingual ideology associated with the CEFR in measuring communicative competence is now being diluted. The new framework conceptualises the six reference levels (A1-C2) as a rainbow, illustrating language proficiency as a continuum where the levels blend. It includes specific descriptors to measure multilingual competence, which are (1) exploitation of the pluricultural repertoire, (2) plurilingual comprehension, and (3) building on the plurilingual repertoire.

Exploitation of the pluricultural repertoire evaluates students’ ability to mediate between cultures, understand diverse perspectives, and show awareness of intercultural communication norms and sensitivity to differences. Plurilingual comprehension encompasses students’ ability to understand spoken or written texts by drawing on knowledge from their language repertoire. Last but not least, building on the plurilingual repertoire assesses students’ ability to use their language repertoire flexibly and strategically by adjusting language according to the social context, using translanguaging strategies effectively, or selecting appropriate multilingual resources (further information can be found on pages 123–128 of the CEFR volume).

Despite this burgeoning area of research, teachers are rarely trained on how to incorporate pedagogical translanguaging in the classroom, and this lack of knowledge calls for more hands-on practice in teacher training degrees (Paulsrud & Gheitasi, 2024; Portolés & Basgall, 2024). Given the positive results derived from translingual practice interventions in the classroom, more pedagogical proposals are needed, including a multilingual approach at the tertiary level. More specifically, teachers-to-be are responsible for this multilingual turn in language teaching. Little evidence exists in the literature on how translanguaging pedagogies can be implemented in teacher training degrees (Orcasitas-Vicandi & Perales-Fernández-de-Gamboa, 2024). Considering this lack of research, the present teaching proposal will contribute to the area of pedagogical translanguaging by providing a practical example of types of tasks that can be implemented in the degrees of teacher training at higher education.

3. Teaching Proposal

3.1. Setting

Undergraduate students enrolled in the Bachelor’s Degree in Preschool Education at University Jaume I in Castelló (Spain) learn English as an additional language in a multilingual context characterised by continuous contact between the official languages, Catalan and Spanish. Students are used to learning three languages from the beginning of their schooling. Catalan, Spanish, and English are taught separately in their respective language courses and also used as vehicles for instruction in content courses.

The first-year undergraduates in the Bachelor’s Degree in Preschool Education typically consist of around 60 students, with a predominance of females. Students’ ages normally vary between 18 and 21. Most of them begin the course with an elementary level of English, corresponding to level A2 of the Common Framework of Reference for Languages. Thus, this teaching proposal is addressed to intermediate students.

The current syllabus for the Bachelor’s Degree in Preschool Education is equivalent to 240 ECTS credits distributed over four years and is structured according to the typology of the subjects. This degree provides comprehensive and generalist curricular training in the personal, social, and emotional development of the youngest children from 0 to 6 years of age. It qualifies graduates to practice the profession of Preschool Teacher.

Two subjects, which account for 12 ECTS, are mainly taught in English: English Language and English Language Teaching. On the one hand, the 6 ECTS English Language subject is taught in the first year by lecturers from the Department of English Studies, and on the other hand, the 6 ECTS English Language Didactics is taught in the second year by lecturers from the Department of Pedagogy and Didactics of Social Sciences, Language, and Literature. This proposal focuses on the course “English language”. It is important to note that this subject only focuses on language and does not include aspects of how to teach English in a multilingual setting. These contents are taught in English Language Didactics. The rest of the courses are taught in Spanish and Catalan.

3.2. Objective

Taking advantage of this multilingual context, the main objective of the subject English Language is to progressively improve the communicative competence in specialised English for preschool education teachers to familiarise them with situations similar to their professional future at school. In doing so, the lecturers will teach English in communicative contexts specific to the preschool classroom, focusing on the practice of language skills (Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing) and the acquisition of the components of the communicative competence construct of Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (2006). This framework includes five competences, which are linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, intercultural competence, strategic competence, and discourse competence (see Figure 1 below).

Discourse competence, a central component of the communicative model, addresses the cohesion and cohesive elements of both spoken and written texts and is determined by the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). It integrates linguistic competence (phonology, grammar, and vocabulary), strategic competence (communication and learning strategies), pragmatic competence (appropriate and effective use of language in social contexts), and intercultural competence (cultural and non-verbal communication factors). All those competencies will be enhanced during our language lessons, as well as the practice of language skills. Students must obtain a level of English equivalent to at least B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

This proposal adopts a holistic view of languages, and the instruction is based on pedagogical translanguaging as the point of reference. Thus, the enhancement of students’ communicative competence in English for preschool teachers will be made by using students’ whole language repertoire and considering the three dimensions proposed by Cenoz and Gorter (2011, 2019), which are the multilingual speaker, the whole linguistic repertoire, and the social context.

3.3. Methodology

In general terms, the methodology of this teaching proposal is based on a communicative and participative approach. Students are exposed to relevant, meaningful, and authentic input, engaging in real practices and communicative situations. The structure of sessions includes a variety of teaching methods such as lectures, discussions, problem-solving, and project design, as well as cooperative and autonomous learning. A variety of tasks are carried out to improve the level of English, such as reading and analysing specialised texts in preschool education, researching documentation on the Internet, preparing written and oral work individually, in pairs, and in groups; oral presentations; role-plays; video work; and classroom assessments.

The novelty of this approach is the adoption of pedagogical translanguaging. Lecturers will use all the knowledge of students’ linguistic repertoire and linguistic experiences as a resource to develop students’ communicative competence. Sessions will be mainly taught in English, and Spanish and Catalan will be used as resources for learning. The use of other languages is also encouraged in the classroom. We have used the pedagogical translanguaging practices proposed by Cenoz and Gorter (2021), which include enhancing metalinguistic awareness, using the whole language repertoire, and employing translanguaging shifts. The specific translanguaging practices for each task are reported in

Table 1. Example of a teaching unit focused on classroom rules.

TEACHING UNIT: CLASSROOM RULES
Task	Duration	Competences and Language Skills	Translanguaging Practice	Objectives
Task 1	10 min	Discourse Linguistic Intercultural Strategic Writing Speaking	Use of whole language repertoire Students brainstorm in any language and write in English	* Reflect on the importance of classroom rules in the preschool setting * Discuss how classroom rules evolve throughout the different educational stages * Think critically about the evolution of rules and the roles of students and teachers. * Define and discuss issues related to teacher education.
Task 2	15 min	Discourse Linguistic Pragmatic Intercultural Writing	Enhancing metalinguistic awareness Students write simultaneously in their L1, L2, and L3 to build linguistic connections across their linguistic repertoire	* Analyse the grammar structures used to express classroom rules in English, Catalan, and Spanish. Other languages may be included. * Introduce the imperative form and other grammatical structures in the three languages. * Compare the forms in the languages used and find similarities and differences. * Research classroom rules in other cultures and compare them to the rules in their country.
Task 3	15 min	Strategic Pragmatic Intercultural Listening	Translanguaging shifts The task is in English, but the students and the teacher may use other languages for any communicative need in the classroom	* Identify classroom rules and behaviour. * Introduce pragmatic concepts, such as requests, strategies, and modifiers used to make requests. * Examine how teachers and students ask for things. * Discuss the degrees of politeness in educational settings. * Focus on sociopragmatic aspects, such as social distance, relative power, and degree of imposition.
Task 4	Home	Pragmatic Strategic Linguistic Discourse Intercultural Speaking	Use of whole language repertoire Students create a multilingual digitally recorded video	* Promote students’ creativity by making a multilingual video in which they teach the class rules themselves. * Integrate technology into the language classroom. * Improve oral competence * Evaluate the work of peers, providing positive aspects and suggestions for improvement.
Task 5	10 min	Pragmatic Linguistic Intercultural Writing	Enhancing metalinguistic awareness Students compare their L1, L2 and L3 to develop pragmatic awareness and produce requests in each language	* Develop pragmatic awareness in the three languages of instruction by making them think about how they will ask for materials, permission, etc., in the three languages. * Understand basic request types and modifiers * Discuss how cultural norms may influence the politeness style
Task 6	15 min	Pragmatic Linguistic Intercultural Strategic Writing Speaking	Use of whole language repertoire Students engage in a multilingual brainstorm, leveraging cross-linguistic transfer of knowledge and skills to complete the task	* Familiarise students with the common classroom discourse used in preschool settings * Explore effective communication strategies employed by teachers * Promote students’ critical thinking and problem-solving.
Task 7	5 min	Pragmatic Strategic Linguistic Discourse Intercultural Writing Speaking	Enhancing metalinguistic awareness Students reflect on and compare the syntactic and pragmatic features of their whole language repertoire	* Compare the sentence structure, pronoun use, and verbs in Catalan, Spanish, and English. * Discuss which language seems more direct. * Develop sensitivity to linguistic backgrounds. * Search for real-life examples in the three languages.
Task 8	20 min	Linguistic Discourse Intercultural Reading Speaking	Use of whole language repertoire Students read a multilingual text and reflect on their multilingual language experience and identity	* Value their multilingual identity * Reflect on their language learning experiences * Discuss multilingualism and its benefits * Develop positive attitudes towards languages * Introduce the concept of Dominant Language Constellation * Foster sensitivity to language diversity in the multilingual classroom
Task 9	10 min	Linguistic Intercultural Reading	Enhancing metalinguistic awareness Students activate prior knowledge in their L1 and L2 vocabulary to facilitate L3 production using cognate charts	* To introduce the term cognate and make them reflect on its meaning and how it can be used for language learning. * Compare the lexical similarities and differences in the three languages. * Improve reading comprehension skills * Expand vocabulary in three languages * Integrate ICT tools in language learning
Task 10	5 min	Linguistic Intercultural Speaking	Use of whole language repertoire Students do online research and explore idiomatic expressions in the three languages.	* Explore idiomatic expressions in the three languages * Analyse and compare the similarities and differences of the three languages. * Use of online tools
Task 11	15 min	Discourse Intercultural Listening Speaking	Translanguaging shifts The task is in English, but the students and the teacher may use other languages for any communicative need in the classroom	* Understand messages related to educational issues * Express ideas and opinions about multilingualism * Reflect on ways of learning and teaching languages
Task 12	Home	Pragmatic Strategic Linguistic Discourse Intercultural Writing	Translanguaging shifts Essays will be written in English. Reviewers will provide feedback in English, although other languages can be used for clarification	* Write an opinion essay describing experiences and views on topics which are related to education * Peer-review students’ drafts to facilitate constructive feedback * Evaluate the revised essays for improvements * Reflect upon using a multilingual approach in the classroom

.

3.4. Lesson Plan

The subject has 30 sessions of 2 h each, totalling 60 h for the semester. Additionally, students are expected to devote 90 h to self-study and preparation of assignments. The syllabus revolves around education to motivate students and arouse their interest in their future profession by promoting meaningful and comprehensive learning. The sequencing of the units follows a logical order by thematic blocks. Each unit is broken down according to the topic of interest, competences, and skills to be developed, although all skills and competences are practised in all units. Examples of units are students’ backgrounds, teachers’ personalities, recess and play, the first day at school, technology, and stages of education and certification, among many others. Common to all the sessions is the emphasis on the classroom discourse, i.e., the language produced by teachers in different situations that occur regularly in the classroom.

In the following table, we present an illustrative example of a teaching unit entitled “Classroom rules”. We have used the checklist proposed by Carrasco Flores and Jiménez-Cervantes Arnao (2018, p. 82) to identify and classify tasks according to the components of communicative competence and language skills. This tool may be useful for lectures to establish a criterion. Table 1 provides a basic description of the approximate timing, competences, language skills, translanguaging practice used, and objectives for each task. A sample of the tasks is presented in Appendix A. The materials employed were purposefully and strategically designed by the author.

The table above describes a planned chronological lesson that can be carried out through a pedagogical approach, although tasks may be modified and adapted to the students’ needs and learning context.

3.5. Assessment

The objective of the course is to progressively improve the development of communicative competence in specialised English for preschool teachers from a multilingual perspective to reach level B1 of the CEFR.

In our proposal, tasks 1 to 11 are part of the formative assessment. Those tasks require teacher observation and informal feedback. Lectures may ensure that students address all parts of the task, manage group dynamics and turn-taking, check understanding of the content and critical thinking, address language and communication issues, monitor cultural sensitivity and encourage the use of their language repertoire as scaffolding. Regarding multilingual assessment within a pedagogical translanguaging framework, students at B1 level “can generally respond to the most commonly used cultural cues, act according to sociopragmatic conventions and explain or discuss features of their own and other cultures” (Council of Europe, 2020, p. 124). More specifically, the following list of descriptors provided by the Council of Europe (2020) details the expected learning outcomes in each dimension (

Table 2. Descriptors used by the CEFR for multilingual assessments (Council of Europe, 2020, pp. 125–128).

Building on Pluricultural Repertoire	Can generally act according to conventions regarding posture, eye contact, and distance from others.
	Can generally respond appropriately to the most commonly used cultural cues.
	Can explain features of their own culture to members of another culture or explain features of the other culture to members of their own culture.
	Can explain in simple terms how their own values and behaviors influence their views of other people’s values and behaviors.
	Can discuss in simple terms the way in which things that may look “strange” to them in another sociocultural context may well be “normal” for the other people concerned.
	Can discuss in simple terms the way their own culturally determined actions may be perceived differently by people from other cultures.
Plurilingual Comprehension	Can use what they have understood in one language to understand the topic and main message of a text in another language (e.g., when reading short newspaper articles in different languages on the same theme). Can use parallel translations of texts (e.g., magazine articles, stories, passages from novels) to develop comprehension in different languages.
	Can deduce the message of a text by exploiting what they have understood from texts on the same theme in different languages (e.g., news in brief, museum brochures, online reviews).
	Can extract information from documents in different languages in their field (e.g., to include in a presentation).
	Can recognize similarities and contrasts between the way concepts are expressed in different languages, in order to distinguish between identical uses of the same word/sign and “false friends”.
	Can use their knowledge of contrasting grammatical structures and functional expressions of languages in their plurilingual repertoire in order to support comprehension.
Building on Plurilingual Repertoire	Can exploit creatively their limited repertoire in different languages in their plurilingual repertoire for everyday contexts, in order to cope with an unexpected situation.

).

The table above shows can-do statements that are useful for assessing any task that requires multilingual assessment. These descriptors go beyond the traditional assessment of grammatical accuracy, which is focused on specific linguistic items in isolation, and provide a richer picture of the user’s ability to use language strategically and effectively. Task 12, which is intended to be completed at home, is the only task that will receive formal assessment. This task consists of an essay about students’ views on pedagogical translanguaging. The writing process is cyclical and includes three main phases: planning, formulation, and revision. In the planning phase, students critically reflect on the main topic and strategically organise the information. Multilingual brainstorming is crucial at this stage for structuring ideas and identifying the genre, grammatical structures, style, and vocabulary. This phase actively encourages the use of diverse, multilingual digital resources for information gathering. Regarding the formulation phase, students must know how to interpret data, synthesise information from various sources, and construct an essay that reflects their thoughts. Finally, the revision phase enables students to reformulate the original text, considering aspects of adequacy, discourse cohesion, grammatical correctness, and pragmatic and cultural aspects. This revision, carried out by classmates, is conducted in English; however, other languages are permitted in their comments. Using translingual shifts in their communication fosters their multilingual awareness. Peer review provides students with quick feedback and facilitates a re-planning of the writing process, which encourages them to reflect on their learning strategies and review the different components of the communicative competence construct.

Teachers can use the indicators provided by the Council of Europe (2020) to evaluate writing activities and integrate the can-do statements described above to assess multilingual competence.

4. Discussion

This teaching proposal for the 6 ECTS course “English Language” in the degree of Preschool Education presents a practical lesson plan focused on preschool-related issues and uses pedagogical translanguaging as the main approach for teaching. Translanguaging has become a popular term in the literature. As claimed by Tai (2024, p. 1), “translanguaging has transformative effects on pedagogy and students’ development of multilingualism”. Indeed, the benefits of using the whole language repertoire through pedagogical translanguaging have been proven in different areas of students’ language awareness (García et al., 2017; Hopp & Thoma, 2021; Cenoz & Santos, 2020; Portolés & Gayete, 2024). However, the multilingual turn advocated by scholars like Cenoz and Gorter (2011) or May (2013) has not been successfully incorporated into teacher training programmes, and teacher classroom practices are still monolingual-biased.

In light of this transformative scenario in English teaching, universities must train future teachers by adopting a multilingual perspective in subjects with a linguistic component. Using a pedagogical translanguaging approach may enhance all dimensions (linguistic, pragmatic, discursive, strategic, and intercultural) of the construct of communicative competence by using all languages in their linguistic repertoire. A translanguaging pedagogy in the classroom does not imply that there is freedom of language use in the language classroom; teachers must ensure maximum exposure to the target language, but without prohibiting the use of other languages and benefiting from the resources that a multilingual speaker has at their disposal. Using Cenoz and Gorter’s (2021) framework of classroom practices enables a coherent integration of different pedagogical practices, with varying degrees of multilingualism, ranging from the most multilingual “enhancing metalinguistic awareness” to the more conservative “translanguaging shifts”. This approach includes working on language skills by using multilingual texts and the L1 as scaffolding, recognising and acting according to pragmatic conventions, working on similarities and differences between languages, alternating languages depending on the interlocutor, domain, or situation to facilitate communication, transferring resources we already have from one language to others, etc. In other words, it is of utmost importance to develop students’ multilingual competence by using the languages that make up their linguistic repertoire. Furthermore, in today’s globalised world, developing multilingual awareness and a plural identity enables individuals to critically reflect on multilingual and intercultural education. This approach to learning English will not only promote reflection on languages through an attitude of curiosity, equity, and social justice but will also create teaching-learning contexts that are more realistic, inclusive, meaningful, and similar to how people use languages in everyday life.

Trainee teachers stand at the forefront of the multilingual turn in education and should be knowledgeable about multilingual pedagogies to effectively teach future generations of children. However, a persistent challenge exists as current university courses in Spain often maintain a monolingual bias and fail to incorporate the potential of translanguaging into teacher training. As a result, future pre-school teachers feel unprepared due to a lack of specific education in multilingual pedagogies and suitable multilingual teaching materials (Portolés & Basgall, 2024). Considering this gap, the present pedagogical approach can serve as an inspiration for their future practice. The tasks outlined herein represent an example of practices characteristic of pedagogical translanguaging, which can be modified according to the teaching context and the needs of the students. Last but not least, this teaching proposal leaves ground for future research and emphasises the need for more practical examples to enrich the field of pedagogical translanguaging in the multilingual classroom.