Translanguaging and Teaching L2 Pragmatics

The predominant perspective in L2 language education holds that teachers should primarily employ the target language. Various influences, including historical colonial strategies for English learning and teaching have shaped this view, associating native English speakers as the perfect standard. As a result, augmented exposure to the target language, both within and beyond the classroom, has been considered extremely crucial. However, in the past two decades, there have been substantial shifts in monolingual approaches, proposing translanguaging pedagogy, which involves integrating languages other than the primary target language into classroom instruction. This particularly involves recognizing and leveraging learners' linguistic repertoire (, encompassing their mother tongue and any heritage or community languages. The inclusion of multiple languages in language classrooms, whether incidental or deliberate, can serve various educational purposes, such as providing clarifications, explanations, discipline, as well as fostering inclusion and social equity. Additionally, the translanguaging approach aligns EFL learners’ language knowledge with their educational purposes while acknowledging their identity. Therefore, adding translanguaging into EFL teaching programs can be auspicious. Pedagogical translanguaging has recently received attention among ELT scholars, and a sizable body of research has already been conducted to examine its possible advantages in teaching/learning L2 skills. The present paper attempts to take into view pedagogical translanguaging as fruitful tool in teaching L2 pragmatics.