Translanguaging for critical multilingual language awareness: Classroom activities for socially just language education

This article introduces a Translanguaging for Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (TL-for-CMLA) approach and illustrates how it can be operationalized through concrete pedagogical activities in language teacher education and additional language classrooms. The paper argues for an explicitly critical orientation that foregrounds power, racialization, and linguistic hierarchies rather than treating multilingualism as a neutral resource. The purpose of this innovation in practice article is to present two classroom activities that bridge critical language ideologies and everyday teaching practice in English as a Second Language (ESL) and Kindergarten-Grade 12 (K-12) classrooms with multilingual learners. The first activity uses multilingual versions of Little Red Riding Hood to develop metalinguistic awareness and challenge target-language only assumptions. The second activity centers multilingual, identity focused spoken word poetry to engage learners affectively, critically, and multimodally with questions of language, identity, and belonging. Together, these activities present adaptable examples, reflection prompts, and underlying rationales that can be applied across proficiency levels and educational contexts. This paper contributes theoretically by clarifying TL-for-CMLA and pedagogically by offering adaptable activities that support socially just language education.