Latinx students' translanguaging strategies and perceptions during narrative writing
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Abstract
The present case study seeks to increase our current understanding of the translanguaging strategies used by Latinx bilinguals and their perceptions of these strategies. The study was carried out at a university in the Midwestern region of the United States. The participants were a Ph.D. student and an undergraduate student who identify themselves as Latinx. Both participants have attended primary and/or secondary school in the United States. Their translanguaging strategies were analyzed during a narrative writing task. Through a think-aloud protocol, the participants’ verbalization was recorded and transcribed for analysis of strategies using a criterion that focused on three main components: textual, social, and personal. These components were selected for the study because they have been considered essential for communication by Canagarajah (2011). The participants were also interviewed after the think-aloud task in order to understand their perceptions of the strategies used. It was found that Latinx bilingual college students tend to translanguage during the think-aloud task. However, in the writing piece, only one of the participants used translanguaging while the other one rejected its use by using English only.