“Writing like a Health Scientist” - A Translingual Approach to Teaching Text Structure in a Diverse Australian Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Franzy

Multilingual Australian classrooms pose major linguistic demands for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) learners, particularly in mastering academic language needed to understand, evaluate, synthesise, and report ideas. Centering on translanguaging pedagogy, the study investigates how collaborative classroom activities can mobilise learners’ full linguistic repertoires to support academic language development. The article provides a detailed account of translanguaging in health sciences literacy and oracy work, showing deeper, richer learning when students’ language resources are acknowledged.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

OPEN ACCESS Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics ISSN 2209-0959 [https://journals.castledown-publishers.com/ajal/](https://journals.castledown-publishers.com/ajal/) Australian Journal ofApplied Linguistics, 3 (1), 77-90 (2020) [https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v3n1.301](https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v3n1.301) “Writing like a Health Scientist”: A Translingual Approach to Teaching Text Structure in a Diverse Australian Classroom SUE OLLERHEAD a ISOBEL CREALY b REBECCA KIRK c a Macquarie University, Australia [susan.ollerhead@mq.edu.au](susan.ollerhead@mq.edu.au) b Beverly Hills Intensive English Centre, Australia [isobel.crealy3@det.nsw.edu.au](isobel.crealy3@det.nsw.edu.au) c Beverly Hills Intensive English Centre, Australia [rebecca.kirk7@det.nsw.edu.au](rebecca.kirk7@det.nsw.edu.au) Abstract In multilingual Australian classrooms, one of the biggest challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) learners is mastering the academic language they need to succeed at school. Unlike everyday language, academic language refers to the abstract, complex and challenging language that students need to understand, evaluate, synthesise and report on ideas that they learn in the classroom. It may include, for example, discipline-specific vocabulary, or textual conventions typical for a content area. As Goldenberg (2008) says: “If we want students to think like mathematicians, read like historians, write like scientists, we need to teach them these ways of thinking reading and writing”(p. 9) . For CALD students in Australian mainstream classrooms, who learn subject content through English, mastery of academic language can prove particularly challenging if they are restricted to“English only” approaches to show what they know and can do. In contrast, a translanguaging approach can enable students to utilize any of the features in their full linguistic repertoires to demonstrate what they know and can do in relation to classroom content (Garcia, Johnson & Seltzer, 2017). This paper reports on an empirical research project that investigated the role of translanguaging (Garcia, 2009) in teaching academic language to CALD students, by setting up collaborative activities in which students worked together to draw upon all of their language and cultural knowledge. During this project, the first author, an academic researcher, collaborated with two classroom teachers (both of whom co-authored this paper) to explore various ways in which teachers could mobilise multilingual teaching pedagogies to support the students’ access to and engagement with language and literacy learning. In providing a finely grained account of how a translanguaging approach was applied to literacy and oracy work in a Health Sciences unit, this article demonstrates clearly how CALD students’linguistic resources are fundamental to their cultural identities, and that enabling students to access all of these resources can lead to deeper and richer learning experiences. Keywords: multilingualism, pedagogy, translanguaging, literacy, genre Introduction As in most countries in our globalised world, multilingual classrooms are a growing feature of the Australian education system, owing to rapid increases in mobility and migration in the Asia Pacific region. Within these classrooms, students have widely divergent linguistic and cultural backgrounds. More often than not, they are learning the language of instruction, English, as an additional language. In Australia, such students are referred to as “English as an additional language (EAL) students.” In New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, EAL students account for 23 per cent of the schoolgoing population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017) . Despite a growing body of research pointing to the benefits of using multilingual approaches to teach CALD students, English continues to dominate in many classrooms globally. In Australia, mainstream schooling dictates that EAL

FAQs

What challenge do CALD learners face in multilingual Australian classrooms?

They often struggle to master academic language distinct from everyday speech, which is needed to understand, evaluate, synthesise, and report classroom ideas.

How does the paper describe a problem with “English only” approaches?

Code-segregation and parallel monolingualism practices restrict students’ use of home languages, which can silence learners or prevent them from demonstrating full understanding.

What pedagogical approach does the study investigate to support CALD students?

The study examines translanguaging, using collaborative activities that enable students to draw on all features of their linguistic repertoires for classroom learning.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Franzy