Ideology and policy: exploring barriers to translanguaging between Chinese teachers and learners in a UK university

Abstract

Over the past few decades, there has been a sharp increase in the number of international students enrolling in postgraduate courses at UK universities, with students from China making up the single largest national group. At the same time, there has been a gradual increase in Chinese teachers and faculty members, as these same students continue their studies and build a life in UK academia. Ideally, this demographic shift should offer the opportunity for a flourishing multilingual and translingual academic space in UK universities. However, this is often not the case, with English remaining the default and often only option in teacher/student interactions, regardless of the linguistic and cultural background of the interlocutors. In this study, we explore the barriers to translanguaging practices between Chinese students and their Chinese dissertation supervisor. Through observation of supervisory sessions and interviews with students, we found considerable resistance to translanguaging practices involving the use of shared first language whilst in the UK learning environment. This resistance was seen to be driven by native-speakerist and monolinguistic ideologies, lack of institutional language policy, and actions and attitudes of individual students and teachers.

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