Enhancing Motivation and Listening Comprehension Among Japanese EFL Students Through Translanguaging Practices

ABSTRACT This study employed an action research framework to investigate the impact of translanguaging on listening comprehension and learning motivation among Japanese university‐level EFL students. The participants first listened to an English passage, discussed it in English‐only groups, and wrote English comprehension summaries. A translanguaging intervention was then introduced, whereby students were encouraged to leverage their full linguistic repertoires to enhance listening comprehension and bridge knowledge gaps in collaboration with their pairs. The participants listened to another English passage and engaged in group discussions using translanguaging before producing individual summaries in English. A comparison of the two comprehension summaries showed that participants scored significantly higher on theirs when they used translanguaging during discussions, producing longer summaries that included more main idea units with greater accuracy than when limited to English‐only use. Post‐task interviews further revealed that translanguaging supported both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation by promoting learner autonomy and validating students’ linguistic identities. Notably, several participants reported a shift in their attitudes, illustrating how a well‐structured translanguaging intervention can effectively reshape beliefs about language learning.