Foreign language (FL) writing has undergone a number of key evolutions over the past 50 years. But despite attempts toward a reframing of FL learners as emergent bilinguals, bilingual languaging strategies such as translanguaging are still rarely seen in most FL education contexts, and bilingual composition strategies are yet to become integrated into mainstream FL writing education as a result. The goal of the present study was thus to investigate the effects of weak and strong forms of translanguaging on the production of Japanese EFL students’ academic and creative composition pieces. The findings suggest that by allowing FL learners to engage in strong translanguaging practices, removing the “barriers” between named languages, during the planning stage of their English composition, learners are able to score higher than those who were forced to use one language over the other (either the target language or their native language). They were also able to produce more concise, well-formed essays with fewer misused lexical items from a lack of relevant language knowledge or experiences.
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