CUE October 2026 Newsletter

Translanguaging: Why All of a Student’s Languages Belong in the Classroom

Key Points

• Translanguaging is the natural way multilingual people communicate. They draw on all of their languages and dialects, along with gestures and drawings, to express ideas and understand what they hear and read.
• Translanguaging pedagogy puts all of a student’s languages to deliberate use: linking languages during lessons, assessing what children know in every language, and building pride in being multilingual.
• Teachers can build translanguaging into lessons on vocabulary, sounding out words, oral language, writing, and story retelling, even if they don’t speak their students’ home languages.
• Excluding children’s home languages from literacy instruction limits comprehension and learning. Including them strengthens both.
• Translanguaging should also shape how school leaders choose curriculum, design assessments, and plan professional development.

Adapted from “The Science of Reading and Dual Language Education: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Language and Literacy Development,” The Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University (2025)

At the Center for Urban Education (CUE), multicultural perspectives sit at the center of our curriculum. Our teacher candidates carry that commitment into the classrooms where they work as paraprofessionals. There, they pay close attention to the languages and cultures their students bring with them. One of the most practical ways to build on these strengths is translanguaging, which invites children to use all of their languages as they learn.

Nationally, only 8% of emergent bilinguals (students still developing English as well as their home language) are enrolled in dual-language programs. Most state reading guidance for these students focuses on English alone. Research points us in a different direction.

Multilingual children use every language they know to think, learn, and communicate. Instruction works better when it builds on that fact. Home languages are a strength. Teachers can use them as a bridge to English.

What Translanguaging Actually Is

Translanguaging describes how multilingual people draw on their entire language repertoire: everything they know how to say, read, write, and express. That repertoire includes named languages like English, Spanish, or Arabic; regional varieties such as Dominican Spanish; and nonverbal tools such as gestures, drawings, and symbols.

A student reading a story in English may be working out its meaning in their home language. Teachers can support that process. Before asking for a retelling in English, a teacher can let the student talk through the story in any language or sketch the main events. The teacher gets a truer picture of what the student understood, and the student builds a bridge into English.

Choices like this are what translanguaging pedagogy is about: deliberately welcoming all of a child’s languages into learning.

Why It Matters for Reading Outcomes

Multilingual children do better in reading when teachers make cross-linguistic connections, pointing out how their languages are alike and how they differ. In a study by Soltero-González et al. (2016), emergent bilinguals in kindergarten through third grade learned to read in both Spanish and English. Those whose lessons linked the two languages scored higher on classroom and state reading and writing tests than the students who learned each language in turn.

The pattern holds for younger children, too. In a preschool study by Soto et al. (2020), teachers gave Latine children early literacy lessons in Spanish, with chances to connect what they learned to English. Their phonological awareness (the ability to hear and work with the sounds in words) and letter knowledge grew in both languages.

Why does linking languages work? The answer is cross-linguistic transfer: skills a child builds in one language can carry over to another. Transfer comes more easily between languages that share an alphabet, like Spanish and English, than between languages with very different writing systems, like English and Chinese. Research shows that translanguaging helps children make these connections and grasp new ideas sooner.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Here is what translanguaging can look like during literacy lessons:

Vocabulary that Bridges Languages

Teachers introduce a new English word and invite students to link it to words they know at home. A display pairing the word with its home-language equivalents makes those links visible, and any teacher can create one. Cognates, such as menu in English and menú in Spanish, offer another bridge.

Decoding that Starts on Shared Ground

Decoding, or sounding out written words, is easier when teachers start with the sounds and spelling patterns a student’s two languages share, then move to the ones that differ. For Spanish speakers, that might mean starting with a letter like m, which makes the same sound in Spanish and English. Starting with shared sounds builds on what students already know.

Oral Language Practice with Built-in Supports

Sentence starters (such as “I think the character felt _ because _”), key words in English and the home language, and plenty of back-and-forth conversation help emergent bilinguals take part in English discussions while still drawing on their home language.

Writing that Starts in Any Language

Students plan by drawing, filling in graphic organizers, or jotting notes in their home language. Then the teacher helps them build an English version.

What This Means for School Leaders

Translanguaging happens in the classroom, but leaders’ decisions about curriculum, assessment, and professional development can support the work. The Children’s Equity Project recommends assessing children in every language they know and using conceptual scoring, which gives credit for a correct answer in any language.

Leaders who review curricula can ask three questions. Do the materials help students connect their languages? Does the content reflect students’ home languages and cultures? Does the content leave room for students to draw on every language they have?

Beyond general training in the science of reading, teachers and administrators need training on how to teach emergent bilinguals: how students’ languages compare, how to help students connect them, and which teaching and assessment practices work best.

Rethinking Literacy

If literacy means decoding text, making meaning from it, and sharing what you understand, then a child who does all of that in two languages demonstrates more skill than a single-language benchmark can measure.

To close achievement gaps in reading, schools need to treat home languages as a strength rather than a problem to fix. That shift begins with understanding translanguaging. It becomes real through the choices schools and districts make next.

Sources:

Soto-Boykin, X., Aponte, G. Y., & Meek, S. (2025, August). The Science of Reading and Dual Language Education: Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Language and Literacy Development. The Children’s Equity Project, Arizona State University. https://cep.asu.edu/resources/TheScienceofReadingandDualLanguageEducation

Soltero-González, L., Sparrow, W., Butvilofsky, S., Escamilla, K., & Hopewell, S. (2016). Effects of a paired literacy program on emerging bilingual children’s biliteracy outcomes in third grade. Journal of Literacy Research, 48(1), 80–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16653842

Soto, X. T., Crucet-Choi, A., & Goldstein, H. (2020). Effects of a supplemental Spanish phonological awareness intervention on Latinx preschoolers’ dual language emergent literacy skills. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(3), 1283–1300. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-20-0002