Much work has investigated how the incorporation of a translanguaging pedagogy for language learning for academic purpose encourages a learning process in which a new reality, a new original and independent phenomenon emerges (García, 2018). These translanguaging spaces enhance language learners' creativity by providing them to use their full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to fixed boundaries in between named languages, language use and language norms. Within these spaces, a translanguaging pedagogy enables plurilinguals to use one language to express certain things while an-other language allows them to express other things, to combine all this in their writing and express things their own way (Canagarajah, 2015; Lee and Canagarajah, 2019). The flexible use of varied languages is linked to creativity in that it means exercising a voice that is language the learner's own voice and not the repetition of someone else's. It also encourages learners to use one language in a way that accommodates emergence and diversity. Translanguaging spaces resulting in increased creativity do also have something to do with negotiating, constructing and breaking prescriptive norms (Eloy, 1998). Conforming to certain norms but also deviating from them to express meaning is what we focus on in this study. Given that goal, we use qualitative analysis of the value of translanguaging for French language learning students in writing creatively of samples randomly collected in a range of varied learning situations. Attention is paid to the ways students translanguage and negociate norms as part of a learning process to study both the emergence of linguistic affordances which are « relations of possibility that can be acted upon to make further linguistic actions possible » (van Lier, 2004, p. 95) also entailing restrictions and the relations between the « properties » of the translanguaging space. This paper will provide pedagogical insights about how a translanguaging pedagogy can be used by language teachers to expand learners' abilities and aid them in both learning to write and in acquiring French in a way that is intentional rather than incidental. In doing so, we offer implications for teachers and teachers' education regarding the role of translanguaging in teaching French as an additional language which does not necessarily impede the learning of a dominant norm.
Beghetto, R. A., & Yoon, S. S. (2021). Change through creative learning: Toward realizing the creative potential of translanguaging. In Handbook of social justice interventions in education (pp. 567-586). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Canagarajah, S. (2015). Clarifying the relationship between translingual practice and L2 writing: Addressing learner identities. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(4), 415-440.
Eloy, J. M. (1998). Legitimite Et Legitimisme Linguistiques Questions Theoriques Et Pratiques D'Ideologie Linguistique. REVUE QUEBECOISE DE LINGUISTIQUE-UNIVERSITE DU QUEBEC A MONTREAL, 26, 43-54.
García, O. (2018). Translanguaging, pedagogy and creativity. Éducation plurilingue et pratiques langagières: Hommage à Christine Hélot, 31, 39-58.
