Spanish Language Learners as Meaning-Making Agents: Translanguaging and Material Mediation in Task-Based Language Teaching

Abstract

This classroom-based research study explores how materials mediate interactions and translanguaging practices of beginning and intermediate college-level Spanish language learners during task-based activities. Using a sociocultural lens, excerpts from peer-to-peer interactions are analyzed, focusing on the ways learners use instructional materials to co-construct knowledge and create meaning, while engaging in collaborative interactions that involve language alternation. Findings highlight the key role that materials play in organizing students’ interactions and in guiding, sustaining, and facilitating their communication, and how translanguaging relates to these processes.