Investigating the use of Translanguaging in Reading Literacy among Multilingual First-year Tourism Students at a University of Technology in South Africa

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the efficacy of translanguaging in the reading literacy of multilingual tourism students at one of South Africa’s technology universities. To fulfil this aim, 30 multilingual participants from a tourism course participated in this study. This study was centred on translanguaging practices in a multilingual classroom in Gauteng province in South Africa and was based on three frameworks: heteroglossia, Ubuntu translanguaging and new literacy studies. The study used quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The study revealed that students demonstrated enhanced comprehension levels in recall, reorganization, inference, evaluation, and application when translanguaging practices were integrated into their reading. This finding suggests that the translanguaging intervention had a positive effect on the reading literacy of the participants. Translanguaging not only helped to enhance the reading literacy of participants but also promoted positive identity construction among the students. This study meant that translanguaging is an all-rounder pedagogy that offers cognitive benefits and transforms both the learning space and the individual. It is argued that translanguaging is better for helping students with reading literacy in higher education. Therefore, this study recommends that lecturers in higher education should practice translanguaging in their classrooms to solve the students’ reading woes and help build their identities. There is a need to expand the translanguaging and reading literacy field to more technical subjects like engineering and information technology in higher education.