TY - JOUR
T1 - An art of being in between
T2 - The promise of hybrid language practices
AU - O'Connor, Brendan
AU - Crawford, Layne J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited .
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - While bilinguals frequently mix languages in everyday conversation, these hybrid language practices have often been viewed from a deficit perspective, particularly in classroom contexts. However, an emerging literature documents the complexity of hybrid language practices and their usefulness as an academic and social resource for bilingual students. This chapter examines hybrid language practices among English- and Spanishspeaking high school students in an astronomy/oceanography classroom in southern Arizona. Microethnography, or fine-grained analysis of video recordings from long-term ethnographic observation, is used to reveal what bilingual students accomplished with hybrid language practices in the classroom and to outline implications for teachers who want to engage their students' hybrid repertoires. Specifically, the analyses reveal that careful attention to hybrid language practices can provide teachers with insights into students' academic learning across linguistic codes, their use of language mixing for particular functions, and their beliefs about language and identity. The research is necessarily limited in scope because such in-depth analysis can only be done with a very small amount of data. Nevertheless, the findings affirm that hybrid language practices can enrich classroom discourse, academic learning, and social interaction for emergent bilinguals. The chapter highlights a teacher's story in order to offer practical guidance to other teachers who seek to capitalize on the promise of hybrid language practices in their own classrooms.
AB - While bilinguals frequently mix languages in everyday conversation, these hybrid language practices have often been viewed from a deficit perspective, particularly in classroom contexts. However, an emerging literature documents the complexity of hybrid language practices and their usefulness as an academic and social resource for bilingual students. This chapter examines hybrid language practices among English- and Spanishspeaking high school students in an astronomy/oceanography classroom in southern Arizona. Microethnography, or fine-grained analysis of video recordings from long-term ethnographic observation, is used to reveal what bilingual students accomplished with hybrid language practices in the classroom and to outline implications for teachers who want to engage their students' hybrid repertoires. Specifically, the analyses reveal that careful attention to hybrid language practices can provide teachers with insights into students' academic learning across linguistic codes, their use of language mixing for particular functions, and their beliefs about language and identity. The research is necessarily limited in scope because such in-depth analysis can only be done with a very small amount of data. Nevertheless, the findings affirm that hybrid language practices can enrich classroom discourse, academic learning, and social interaction for emergent bilinguals. The chapter highlights a teacher's story in order to offer practical guidance to other teachers who seek to capitalize on the promise of hybrid language practices in their own classrooms.
KW - Hybrid language practices
KW - Language mixing
KW - Linguistic repertoires
KW - Microethnography
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U2 - 10.1108/S1479-368720150000024008
DO - 10.1108/S1479-368720150000024008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84922537546
SN - 1479-3687
VL - 24
SP - 149
EP - 173
JO - Advances in Research on Teaching
JF - Advances in Research on Teaching
ER -