Unpacking the affordances of teacher-created translanguaging notes for second-language learning motivation in an English-medium-instruction classroom

Translanguaging scholarship has demonstrated how teachers’ use of linguistic and non-linguistic resources in classroom interactions could facilitate teachers to achieve their pedagogical goals and promote students’ learning and participation. However, few qualitative studies have conducted fine-grained analyses of how teachers strategically use translanguaging notes to facilitate students’ learning in a new second-language English-medium-instruction learning environment. Although some studies have explored student-created translanguaging notes, teacher-created translanguaging notes have not received much scholarly attention. To address this under-researched area, this study draws on a refined theoretical framework for researching translanguaging and language learning motivation in context to explore the affordances of translanguaging notes in a Year 7 English-medium-instruction mathematics classroom, where students are undergoing a transition period from first-language (Cantonese) medium instruction to second-language English-medium instruction, in micro-, meso- and macro-levels. This study employs multimodal conversation analysis to analyse classroom interactional data at a micro-level. The micro-level analyses are complemented by both the teacher’s and students’ video-stimulated-recall-interview data that are analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, providing analyses at meso- and macro-level. This paper argues that teacher-created translanguaging notes could cater to students’ needs by presenting abstract and complex mathematical concepts through students’ familiar languages, thereby facilitating students’ understanding and memorisation. It is also argued that translanguaging notes could promote students’ second-language learning motivation, particularly for those undergoing the transition.