2021 Speaker Series—Defining Latinx in the U.S.: Language, Race, and Ideology
LATINX CHILDREN:
BILINGUALISM, TRANSLANGUAGING
AND EDUCATION
Ofelia García
City University of New York
[in person – location TBA]
December 8, 2021
5 pm
Young Latinx children are growing up in homes where bilingual practices abound. But these bilingual practices have little to do with the ways in which schools have defined either language or bilingualism in education.
This presentation questions the concept of language that schools have adopted, as well as the construct of bilingualism with which dual language bilingual programs have been operating. It shows that the children’s dynamic bilingual practice as they draw on their unitary semiotic repertoire, what we call translanguaging, has little to do with the understandings about bilingualism of many, and especially of educators in schools.
Based on the theory/practice of translanguaging, the presentation not only offers theoretical clarification of translanguaging, but also describes practices to engage the languaging, creativity and criticality of Latinx bilingual children, for both parents at home and educators in school.
