The origins of translanguaging lie in Welsh bilingual education in the 1980s (Lewis et al. 2012). ‘Trawsieithu’—a Welsh term coined by Cen Williams, and later translated into English as ‘translanguaging’—was constructed as a purposeful cross-curricular strategy for ‘the planned and systematic use of two languages for teaching and learning inside the same lesson’ (p. 3). Practitioners working in English as an Additional Language (EAL) contexts in the UK have begun to recognize the pedagogic potential of translanguaging (Li 2018a: 32) in ways that could also be beneficial to other language education practitioners. Indeed, recent discussions of translanguaging tie in well with an ongoing present-day reappraisal within ELT of what Hall and Cook (2012) term ‘own-language use’ in language classrooms.
Conceptually, translanguaging resonates with the ideas of Cummins (2001), whose work has for long been influential among EAL practitioners worldwide. His concepts of ‘common underlying proficiency’ (CUP) and linguistic interdependence stress the positive benefits of transfer in language learning. Researchers working in multilingual classrooms have begun to use the term ‘translanguaging’ to describe multilingual oral interaction (e.g. García, 2009; Blackledge and Creese, 2010) and the use of different languages in written texts (e.g. Canagarajah, 2011; García and Kano, 2014). Conteh (2018) provides a critical review of translanguaging as pedagogy, arguing that the emphasis of research has so far been on understanding processes of interaction rather than the pedagogic potential.