Mobile Multilinguals: Translanguaging Strategies of EMI Chinese Students in Japanese Higher Education

Abstract Japan’s efforts to internationalize higher education through English-Medium Instruction (EMI) programs have attracted a diverse population of mobile international students. However, many students, for example, Chinese students—the largest international student group in Japan—face challenges in using Japanese for communication as they are not required to learn the language by school while the society demands so. To investigate how multilingual students survive in the process of internationalization and how universities should respond to this phenomenon by conducting language policies, this longitudinal study adopts a sociolinguistic ethnographic approach to investigate the oral and written communication practices of 6 Chinese students in EMI programs. The findings reveal that these students employ three key translanguaging strategies to communicate outside the classroom: inter-language translanguaging, intra-language translanguaging, and extra-language translanguaging. These translanguaging practices also provide implications for the diversity of Japanese higher education and indicate the importance of recognizing and fostering translanguaging spaces and competence.