Translanguaging as a Mediational Tool in the Process of Feedback in Second Language Writing

2.1 Understanding L2 Writing from a Sociocultural Perspective

This study is supported by views on sociocultural theory envisioned by Vygotsky (1978), specifically the role of language in communication and cognitive development. He maintains that learning and development cannot be disconnected from their context and culture. The social environment, language, interactions and culture influence cognition. In a classroom context, concepts and learning encoded in the language of the home culture are easier to understand and comprehend. On the contrary, a concept that cannot be encoded in the learners’ language becomes inaccessible to them or they struggle to understand. Thus, concepts communicated in one language might require learners to translate them into their L1 to ignite thinking before they translate the thoughts into their L2 to communicate.

Mediation, as a central Vygotskian sociocultural construct, suggests that our relationship with the world is mediated by tools—material and symbolic. Vygotsky’s mediation theory, however, does not elaborate on the “activities of human mediators beyond their function as vehicles of symbolic tools” (Kozulin, 2002, p. 69). Not every interaction among the learners, teachers, and learning material qualifies as a mediated learning interaction. Three criteria of mediation should be met (Feuerstein et al., 1988): (1) intentionality/reciprocity; (2) transcendence; and (3) meaning. When it refers to feedback in writing, intentionality means the teacher’s deliberate effort to mediate feedback for students, directing their attention to the strategies needed to solve their problems in writing. Reciprocity refers to the teacher-student interaction during which students are actively participating in the feedback process rather than playing the role of passive recipients. Transcendence means students’ ability to transfer learning from one feedback situation to another. Finally, meaning refers to the significance of the interaction, achieved by the teacher’s helping learners interpret the significance of the task and what they have accomplished in writing, mediating a sense of achievement.

Previous studies of L2 writing from sociocultural perspectives have focused on identifying the types of mediating resources writers use in the L2 context (Lei, 2008; Wang et al., 2023; Yang, 2014; Yu & Lee, 2016). By observing two skilled student writers’ strategy use in the Chinese EFL context, Lei (2008) identified four types of mediation strategies, namely, artifact-mediated (e. g., literary works), rule-mediated (e. g., evaluation criteria), community-mediated (e. g., campus community) and role-mediated (e. g., language learner). Yang (2014) studied college ESL students’ collaborative business writing and argued that their writing activities are facilitated and/or constrained by their L1 background, L2 proficiency and group rules. Yu and Lee (2016) also highlighted the importance of L1, and L2 writing criteria, group rules, help from teachers and changing roles of students when studying peer feedback strategies. While various mediating resources (especially L1 and L2) have been found and examined in these studies, there is a dearth of discussion on translanguaging as the mediating artifact.

2.2 Feedback in the Dialogic Process in L2 Writing Classrooms

Feedback significantly improves knowledge and skill acquisition, motivating learning and changing learning approaches (Shute, 2008). It helps students troubleshoot their current performance and therefore close the performance gap, self-correct and improve subsequent learning. The feedback that provides a meaningful learning experience is, therefore, able to help students understand their strengths and weaknesses in writing and what they can do to close the gaps (e.g., improve the weaknesses) in their writing.

The benefits and drawbacks of peer feedback (Cao et al., 2019; Edwards & Liu, 2018; Yu & Hu, 2017) and teacher feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2019; Zhang & Hyland, 2018) in L2 writing classrooms have been well documented by a large number of studies and constitute an extensive and well-established field of research. What these studies have in common is the recognition that effective feedback practices are vital for students’ learning and development. It has, however, been recognized by numerous studies that for feedback to be effective, it is essential that students actively participate in the feedback process (Zhang & Hyland, 2018).

There are a variety of philosophical approaches to providing feedback, but the one that this study takes rests on the notion that students are “active agents in learning, and consistent with this, active constructors of feedback information” (Nicol, 2010, p. 503). According to Nicol, student learning requires active engagement and this is equally important when it comes to receiving feedback. Nicol argues that though the quality of the actual feedback impacts student learning, even more significant is how students interact with comments. For Nicol, making feedback effective means reconceptualizing the process as “a dialogical and contingent two-way process” (2010, p. 503).

The burgeoning shift to feedback processes that foreground active involvement in learning is evidenced in several recent studies. Torres et al. (2020) highlight the importance of strengthening learner agency with feedback that encourages students to reflect on the effects of their language use. Their study points explicitly to the utility of reflective tasks which aid students in engaging with feedback received and present the giving and receipt of feedback as an interdiscursive process whereby students emulate the discourse used in teacher feedback to reflect in writing on their performance. In this sense, the dialogism involved in the engagement in the feedback process is part of a learner’s entry into a disciplinary discourse community. Taking a socio-constructivist approach to providing feedback, on this occasion to L2 learners of English, Rodway (2018) explores the dialogic nature of feedback by looking specifically at argumentation in students’ texts, rather than micro-level issues such as grammar and mechanics which can sometimes eclipse reflection on content. Furthermore, in a study of learners in a predominantly L1 first-year university composition class, Macklin (2016) proposes that individualized and tailored dialogic feedback might be especially beneficial for L2 learners who may have widely varying linguistic, educational, and cultural backgrounds and for whom an adaptable feedback approach is particularly well-suited.

2.3 Pedagogical Translanguaging in L2 Writing Activities

Translanguaging describes a practice where speakers can leverage their multiple language resources as an integrated system to achieve a communicative or learning task (García & Li, 2014). The concepts of translanguaging and code-switching both involve the alternation between languages within a single discourse, but they differ in their underlying theoretical frameworks and intentions. Code-switching may involve switching between languages or dialects at the sentence or phrase level within a conversation. Translanguaging emphasizes the fluidity and flexibility of language use across linguistic boundaries. It is the process that goes beyond languages by viewing language as a dynamic and integrated system where speakers draw from their entire linguistic repertoire to make meaning (W. Li, 2018). Translanguaging involves the seamless blending and integration of linguistic resources, including vocabulary, grammar, and discourse features, from different languages to effectively communicate and navigate complex contexts. Unlike code-switching, which may be perceived as a conscious choice to switch between languages, translanguaging highlights the natural and unconscious way in which multilingual individuals navigate language use in everyday interactions. In a word, while code-switching and translanguaging share commonalities in their focus on language alternation, translanguaging represents a broader theoretical perspective that emphasizes the dynamic and integrated nature of language use across linguistic boundaries (W. Li & Shen, 2021). In classroom practice, translanguaging can be used: (1) as a scaffold to help emergent bilingual or multilingual students learn an additional language, and (2) to cultivate students’ bilingualism or multilingualism (W. Li, 2011). The studies outlined above lend support to the claim that translanguaging is a naturally occurring phenomenon among emergent bilinguals (García, 2020), functioning as a self-regulatory mechanism that expedites the process of L2 learning, and pedagogical translanguaging refers to the teaching strategies that teachers plan in the classroom, including the alternation of language input and output and other strategies (Cenoz & Gorter, 2021).

Accessing prior knowledge in L1 is an important resource for students who write in an additional language (Canagarajah, 2011; Tullock & Fernandez-Villanueva, 2013). Studies have revealed that L1 and L2 are inevitably intertwined in the minds of EFL writers and this translingual activity should be harnessed. Gunnarsson et al.’ s study (2015) on secondary school students in Sweden shows that students with different cultural backgrounds, recent immigrants included, tend to activate Swedish (students’ home or school language) as the language of thought while engaging with an essay task in English (the target language). The findings are similar to the results obtained by Tullock and Fernandez-Villanueva (2013). Both studies report that the students are more likely to access their home or school language when they engage in a writing task in a non-native language. That is because it is the medium of instruction at the school and the language that students speak at home; thus, they have a high proficiency level. To help students access their language resources, Gunnarsson et al. (2015) suggest strategies in pre-writing such as using all languages and practicing writing for a bilingual audience to activate multilingual resources. The researchers also encourage students to brainstorm on the board with bilingual writing partners using different languages, make connections between words by using cognates, and engage in language comparisons. Further, Wang and Li (2022) report the positive effects of translanguaging practices in oral corrective feedback on Chinese EFL students’ argumentative writing performance.

In this study, we attempt to consider the development of the sociocultural approach and translanguaging in the feedback to understand L2 writers’ purposeful alternation of languages in spoken and written form for receptive and productive modes (García, 2011). García (2009) has been developing parallel literacy in both English and Spanish for young learners, demonstrating that one language can complement the other, and sometimes be fused in the same text. From this perspective, Canagarajah (2016) believes that translingual orientation perceives a synergy between languages which generates new grammar and meanings due to the contemporary global contact zones where languages intermingle. Building upon dialogic pedagogy and socialization models, L2 writers can constructively interact with their peers and their mentors to develop their identities and communicative resources with greater agency in ways relevant to their social functions (Canagarajah, 2016; Martin-Beltrán & Chen, 2013).

This sociocultural approach views writing as a literate activity that is always mediated by and situated in the sociocultural context. It emphasizes the collaborative nature of development that occurs through interaction among members of a society (Yang, 2014). From a sociocultural perspective, cognition and knowledge are characteristically social and are dialogically created and shared within a community. For this reason, the writing activity involves collaboration among people, which may range from direct, face-to-face co-production of texts to the provision of anonymous resources and implicit co-authorship which views talk as key to learning. The use of dialogic pedagogy in this study is intended to nurture students’ confidence as writers and their motivation to write as they traverse from L1 to L2 writing through this sociocultural approach. Writers construct themselves socially, and they do so in multiple ways. For example, they may position themselves ideationally through word choices that express values and beliefs about the topics they address. They also exploit the linguistic and cultural resources available to them to define their relationship to the world they live in as they shuttle between languages and modalities in their learning (Canagarajah, 2011; Velasco & García, 2014). Students increase their control over written discourse when they become aware of the interpretive contexts for their texts and develop a metalanguage from which to analyze these contexts. Then learning becomes socially situated and best achieved through collaboration with and dialogic feedback from peers and teachers on different drafts, revisions, sharing of texts that are in progress or completed, and so on (Yang, 2014).

In short, there have been a growing number of studies on translanguaging and L2 writing, while a majority of studies have paid attention to the use of translanguaging in written materials, only a few have explored translanguaging practices in learners’ L2 writing process. Only a few studies have analyzed the effects of translanguaging in the post-writing stage, especially in L2 writing tutorials and from the sociocultural perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how translanguaging practices in L2 writing tutorials mediate learning in the process of feedback, especially in the post-writing stage.

3.1 Research Question

This study tries to answer the following research question: How do translanguaging practices mediate the process of feedback from the teacher and students in L2 writing tutorials?

3.2 Context and Participants

The study was conducted in the context of 16-week writing tutorials for first-year college students’ English writing at a key university in central China. The tutorials were designed to familiarize students with the features, structures and writing skills of English argumentative essays. The course aims to help students master the construction paradigm, writing skills, language features and logical development of argumentation, and to lay a good foundation for their advanced academic writing and future professional communication.

Among the 24 students who enrolled in this course, 7 first-year students at the English department of the university volunteered to participate in the study. According to the requirements of the course, the students were randomly divided into two groups; to be specific, one group had 4 members and the other had 3 members. They were all native Chinese speakers and intermediate EFL learners, aged between 19 and 21. They had been learning English for more than ten years. They had the same identity as Chinese EFL learners at the same tertiary institution and a homogeneous level of English writing proficiency. The tutor was an MPhil student in English Applied Linguistics at the university. She had two years of experience working as a tutor for this course. Also, she gained 7.5 on the IELTS test, meaning her English proficiency was at an advanced level. Having studied applied linguistics for several years, she was equipped with theories in L2 pedagogy and was familiar with communicative language teaching in L2 writing classrooms.

3.3 Data Collection

This study, seeking to understand translanguaging practices in L2 writing tutorials, adopted a qualitative approach to examine how translanguaging mediated writing, and the implications of translanguaging in L2 writing classrooms. This longitudinal case study collected interactive discourse data to examine the dialogic process of feedback in the tutorial of bilingual, tertiary students. Classroom observation was adopted as the method of data collection. A total of 32 sessions of tutorials were observed, each lasting one hour. The study examined the learners’ and teacher’s translanguaging practices and their influence on the learning of writing. To generate data to address the research question, the study used non-participatory classroom observations. This enabled the generation of live data from naturally occurring social situations. In total, 32 hours of data were recorded by digital voice recorders. After classroom observations, all recorded data were transcribed verbatim. Permission to conduct research was sought and obtained from the Department of Foreign Languages.

3.4 Data Analysis

Data from classroom observation were analyzed first through thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006, p. 87) in six stages: (1) familiarizing oneself with the data; (2) generating initial codes; (3) searching for topics; (4) reviewing topics; (5) defining topics; and (6) preparing reports. We initially transcribed the data and then coded events for pedagogical translanguaging. Our coding began by looking closely at translanguaging events and attempting to identify different types of translanguaging practices. After grouping the events into different types of practices, we took a conceptual step back and asked ourselves how translanguaging was functioning pedagogically in the tutorials. This led us to re-code and regroup the events once more. Through this analysis, the complexity and deeply bilingual, multimodal nature of the observed classroom practices were revealed.

Further, data analysis was iterative and subjected to microgenetic analysis (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), in which changes in the participants’ behavior were examined. According to Vygotsky (1978), it is feasible to trace the development of the psychological process of learning through microgenetic analysis. First, the raw data were transcribed from the classroom observations into lesson transcripts to identify translanguaging occurrences in the lessons. Second, the researchers further scrutinized the translanguaging utterances to understand the purposes for and functions of translanguaging. To check the coding reliability and validity, inter-rater consistency was performed for all recordings. After the second author completed the coding process, the results were analyzed by the first author to achieve high inter-coder reliability. Over 90% agreement was reached between the researcher and an additional rater on all remedial strategies. Disagreements were resolved through discussion for each strategy.

4.1 Translanguaging as a Mediational Tool to Enhance Content Learning

Lantolf and Poehner (2014) underscore that sociocultural theory has always been aligned with meaning- and usage-based theories of language. The tutor used translanguaging to emphasize important points for better understanding during L2 writing tutorials. The findings indicate that translanguaging was used by the teacher to emphasize certain points they wanted learners to understand better and improve cognition.

As illustrated in Excerpt 1, the tutor used translanguaging practices to re-emphasize a point she had said in English to alert learners to its importance and thus mediate L2 writing. In the above episode, the teacher would first utter a statement in English and then repeat it in Chinese. The intention was to make the statement uttered in English more understandable to the students (García & Li, 2014). Classroom observations also showed that the repetition of English utterances in Chinese seemed more habitual than occasional. This was evident from the excerpts above from a lesson on “Definition Writing.” The translanguaging utterances in this situation were sometimes spaced to be close to one another and sometimes an occasional practice. The study, therefore, concluded that translanguaging in L2 writing tutorials took the form of instantaneous translanguaging and helped learners move from the other-regulation stage to the self-regulation stage.

In Excerpt 2, the tutor appeared to mediate explicitly and interfere excessively in the talk when she encountered constraints. She controlled the proceedings greatly by acting as a director through explicit explanations in the interaction. The teacher asked the students to clarify the meaning explicitly, when she noticed the gap in the student’s comprehension of the knowledge of the target language. The study noticed how translanguaging provides an opportunity for learners to draw from their home language repertoires to communicate comfortably without fear of making mistakes as they would if they were using their L2 only. This study also found that translanguaging was used by teachers and learners to transform their teaching and learning spaces and to challenge monolingual ideologies. Translanguaging played an important role in supporting learning in the classroom by helping learners identify gaps in their knowledge, improving learners’ self-regulation and autonomy, engaging learners in higher-order thinking, building rapport and maintaining learners’ identity. Furthermore, translanguaging encourages learners’ resistance to English-only classrooms.

4.2 Translanguaging as a Mediational Tool to Encourage Learner Participation

The findings indicate that translanguaging was also used to encourage learner engagement and participation during tutorials. The teachers used translanguaging to invite learners’ contributions to the classroom discussions. In these learning situations, the teacher used translanguaging when trying to give different learners opportunities to speak in the classroom. For example, when the learner’s response was not what the teacher expected as the correct answer, instead of giving the correct answer, the teacher would first encourage other learners to try and contribute their thoughts, as illustrated in the excerpt below:

In Excerpt 3, S2 used Chinese 怎么说呢 (How do you say it?) or 你觉得呢 (What do you think of it?) to invite learner participation and motivate them to think about the question. This suggests translanguaging was used to encourage an interactive environment in the classroom and learners were able to self-regulate competent participation through translanguaging. W. Li (2018) also found that translanguaging engaged learners in doing their activities, supported teaching and learning and facilitated communication between the teacher and the learners. Translanguaging in the feedback provided appropriate comprehension and production in the students’ utterances. There was evidence in the utterances that students moved from the other-regulation stage to the self-regulation stage.

Draft and revision (Excerpt 3)

Draft: Last but not least, global warming has done irrecoverable damage to human health, don’t think that global warming is none of your business.

Revision: Last but not least, global warming has done irrecoverable damage to human health and dealing with global warming is the mission of everyone.

According to the draft and revision above, we can see that the translanguaging strategy gives assistance to S2’s better understanding of grammatical or syntactical rules and improves his logical expression.

4.3 Translanguaging as a Mediational Tool to Establish Comprehension

The tutor in this study also used translanguaging practices to check whether the learners understood the lesson. Utterances with similar connotations, 你们能明白我想说的吗 (“Do you understand what I mean?”) and 你们能get 到吗 (“Do you get it?”), were frequently used by the teacher to ascertain if learners were actively listening and if they were following their peers’ or teacher’s explanations, as seen in the following excerpt:

In the above excerpt, the learner used the consecutive utterance with the Chinese utterance to ensure the learners’ comprehension of the statements. The tutor’s response is “yes” to confirm her comprehension. And with that response, the tutor would move to the next statement and this continued throughout the lesson. Translanguaging was used as a pedagogical strategy to ensure active listening and comprehension. In this case, it seems that translanguaging was a conscious behavior initiated by the tutor to mediate L2 writing and also showed evidence of the learner’s self-regulation. It is conscious in the sense that the speaker is not interested in either “yes” or “no” but in simply tapping into the linguistic repertoire that is commonly shared.

Draft and revision (Excerpt 4)

Draft: Initially, let’s look at dialectal regional discrimination, which often happens in regions with strong and obvious development levels and economic differences.

Revision: Initially, dialectal regional discrimination is the most common phenomenon, which often happens in regions with great developmental levels and economic differences.

From the draft and revision of Excerpt 4, it can be seen that translanguaging in the dialogic feedback has a positive effect on S6’s argumentative writing. It helps the student to make meaning and clarify the ideas in the discussion by using L1 (Chinese).

4.4 Translanguaging as a Mediational Tool to Provide Pastoral Care

Pastoral care is a term once used exclusively to describe the role of shepherds caring for their sheep in the pasture in Christian religious communities, and this provides a glimpse into its meaning in an educational context (Best, 1999). Effective pastoral care is linked to academic engagement and performance (Furrer & Skinner, 2003), fostering friendly relationships among learners. These factors have been identified as solutions to improve truancy and other forms of absenteeism (Reid, 2003) and enhance resilience and, hence, academic outcomes in learners (Best, 2014).

Pastoral care in education means a whole-school strategic and operational approach to improve learners’ attendance and to foster an atmosphere that is conducive to learning and promotes tolerance, resilience, fairness and equal opportunities for all, with due regard for protected characteristics. Such an approach to pastoral care should eliminate racism, inequality, discrimination and other hindrances to learning, to create an ethos that culminates in engagement and academic achievement of learners. It is increasingly taking a more inclusive function, one that is inextricably linked with teaching and learning to promote learners’ personal and social development and foster positive attitudes in the classroom. In this study, the teacher used the learners’ L1, Chinese, to establish translanguaging’s mediating role where the learner would feel comfortable interacting with the tutor.

[The students laughed again. They were forced to watch this movie when learning a text in a Comprehensive English course. The title of the text was Twelve Angry Men. But they don’t like it. They deliberately change the translation of the tile to show discontent.]

In Excerpt 5, the tutor’s use of translanguaging fulfilled the purpose of pastoral care. The tutor’s translanguaging in this excerpt was necessary to ensure that the personal and social well-being of the students was taken care of before she began the tutorial. Since exercising pastoral care was not part of the formal teaching and learning, the teacher and students chose to interact or dialogue, in their native language, with which they were most comfortable, not their L2, English. Moreover, the use of Chinese alongside English in the above conversation enabled the student (S5) to express himself freely and confidently without any fear of incompetency, and this also promoted students’ self-regulation.