Thoughts and Extended Comments on Garcia and Rodriguez Articles.



For some reason when I printed out the Translanguaging article I got an article where every other word had something wrong with it to the point it was unreadable.  I assumed maybe this was on purpose perhaps to show monolingual people what it is like navigating a language that you are still learning.  So I forced myself to read the whole jumbled article hoping that it would have a cohesive sentence.  It really gave me a headache.  After reading other student's posts about the same article I realized none of them ran into the same problem as I did.  I went back and just viewed the article online and then read the normal version.  But, I was so burnt out from reading the jumbled version I did not really follow what was going on.

Luckily, I read Jolie R's blog post about this article and with her summary and another rereading through the article I have to say I do not find anything wrong inherently with this concept so far.  I liked Jolie's examples of how one might integrate Translanguaging in a class room and the picture examples were a nice visual of what integrating it would look like.  With her post I got a much better idea of what was being presented in the article and it helped me understand Rodriguez's story a lot better than I did before.

From what I gathered from Jolie's post and the article it seems that Translanguaging is being flexible with the use of language to fix the context the best rather than force one language in every context.  I see this all the time at work with Spanish speakers who talk to each other in Spanish and include me in with English and all members of the party switch back and forth to the point where I do not feel left out at all.  If I was really curious to what was said in Spanish all I need is to ask and they tell me no problem.  It makes a more friendly environment for them and for me when there is a healthy flow of English and Spanish.  I can imagine how restricting communication to one or another would make someone feel uncomfortable.

Thinking of the situation like that I understand a lot more where Rodriguez was coming from.  Where it seemed like he felt that English had hijacked his home and robbed his father of enthusiasm to speak because it seemed his father felt he ought to only speak English in his home. Whereas it seems like perhaps this more flexible use of language would have had given Rodrigez and his family a better experience with using English in their home.  

My question for class:  Have you experienced Translanguaging like I had with my coworkers?

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