Pedagogical translanguaging in the primary-school English-L2 class: a case-study in the Chinese context

While translanguaging has been adequately researched in various educational sectors, there is scant research at the primary-level English-L2 classroom in the Chinese educational context. Within a monolingual English-only immersion policy favoured by the state in China for many decades now, translanguaging has been a debated issue recently. Within this context, this study investigates the issue of translanguaging in a video-recorded English-language (L2) primary classroom discourse based on the principles and theoretical underpinnings of conversation analysis (CA) and the Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk (SETT) framework, which organises classroom discourse according to specific local pedagogic goals. Findings and their implications are informative, as they reveal that translaguaging moments overwhelmingly occur in the managerial part of the discourse, i.e. in the teacher-dominated discourse in managing the class.