Title:
TRANSLANGUAGING PRACTICES LECTURERS USE WHEN TEACHING LITERACY AND LANGUAGE IN MULTILILINGUAL CLASSROOMS AT A SELECTED UNIVERSITY IN ZAMBIA

Authors:
Mungala Ruth & David Sani Mwanza, Zambia

Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to analyse the translanguaging practices lecturers use in their lectures at one selected public university in Zambia. This study was conducted after all the lecurers underwent training on multlingual education and mothwr tongue based multilingual language education (MTB-MLE) strategies. The lecturers were trained because zambia is multilingul and they needed to train teachers according to how they were required to teachh in multilingual classrooms in primary schools once deployed. The study was conducted on a sample of 20 literacy and language degree students who are in the first year and 5 lecturers teaching literacy and language at the university. The sample was homogeneously sampled and interview guides were used to collect data from lecturers while classroom observation method was used in the classrooms. The study found that most lecturers translaguaged using practices such as code switching, translation and code mixing. The study showed that most lecturers and students translanguaged while a few did not. Those who did not translanguage explained that university teaching did not require translanguaging on the assumption that university students were conversatnt with english. Therefore, the study concludes that even with intensive taining into translanguaging pedagogy, it is impossible for some university lecturers to apply the pedagogy at the university owing to the anecdotal assumption that all universiy students are proficient in english.