The Divide Between Cantonese and English in Hong Kong students’ Identity: The Possibility of a Translanguaging Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

In Hong Kong, Chinese and English are considered separate mediums of instruction. English immersion is expected for schools that teach with English as the medium of instruction, and direct instruction in Chinese is often used to teach English in Chinese medium schools. Evidently, a great divide persists in the Hong Kong government curriculum. In the English classroom, translanguaging is considered as detrimental to students’ progress or reserved for the lower ability students. The significance of translanguaging on students’ identity and meaning making is overlooked due to institutional English-only discourse. This article examines the possibility and potential impact of translanguaging in Hong Kong from the perspective of a student teacher who was an international school student and tuition centre instructor.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• student identity
• bilingualism
• meaning making
• communicative repertoire

Introduction

For a long time, being trilingual has been a crucial aspect of my identity. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese at home with my family; at school most of my subjects were taught in English, apart from Chinese which was taught in Mandarin. The more proficient I became in these languages, the more they mixed through interactions with my fellow trilingual peers. I attended a private International Baccalaureate (IB) school for all 12 years of schooling, where, in spite of the fact that Cantonese, my home language, was excluded from the classroom, I was able to grow as a learner speaking three languages. Because of the relative social privilege conferred by attending private international school, my experience of it at the time was a bumpy but rewarding ride (some teachers favoured my American-born classmates for their more advanced English skills). I became a chronic code-switcher, and occasionally forgot even the simplest vocabulary in my mother tongue. While a little embarrassing (and concerning for my parents), these negatives were minor as I felt immense pride over this key part of myself; I was grateful for my education which I knew many could only dream of. As a result, I stood by the belief that one can only achieve fluency in a language through immersion: you have to speak, read, write, and listen to English constantly in order to progress. In some east Asian contexts, studies have shown that immersion programmes in English can correlate with enhanced academic results and learning motivation (Jeon 2012). It had seemed reasonable that Cantonese was banned from the classroom since I felt fortunate to be in an immersive environment, and as a teenager I had other things to worry about apart from the connotations of an education in Hong Kong which devalued Cantonese.

In hindsight, my code-switching and multilingualism reflected the complexity of my communicative resources and the complex linguistic identities in Hong Kong – and this article goes on to reflect on whose interests are served by continuing to exclude these from the English classroom.

Hong Kong, currently a special administrative region, was previously a British colony until sovereignty was returned to mainland China in 1997. With the blend of British and Chinese influence, public schools operating under the government curriculum teach with English as the medium of instruction (EMI) or with Chinese (CMI) (Education Bureau 1997; Tsui 2004). Schools are divided into bandings 1 to 3 with Band 1 considered as highest achieving. EMI schools are considered more prestigious, with a higher percentage belonging in the Band 1 range (Salili and Lai 2003, 53). As a result, English proficiency corresponds to being from a reputable school and being a diligent student. The unique geopolitical relation of Hong Kong and mainland China means a high number of immigrant families come to Hong Kong pursuing ‘better’ English education for their children, especially in Band 1 EMI schools or international schools (Hue 2008; Tong et al. 2021). The immersive EMI environment of such schools can be overwhelming for ESL learners. On the other hand, the lower English proficiency of CMI school students means teachers often have to give instructions and translations in Chinese. There seems to be no middle ground between immersion and translation under this divide. Evidently, the value attached to the systemisation and exclusionary status of English as the basis of socioeconomic power and racial supremacy meant that it was difficult for Hong Kong students to think of languages as anything but discrete, closed, rules-based systems that do not interact with each other.

This belief was only reinforced when I worked for private tuition centres in Hong Kong. My supervisors breathed down my neck, reminding me not to speak Cantonese or Mandarin with our students, who were mostly secondary school age. I was discouraged from translating unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts in Cantonese. They said it would do nothing to help pupils improve in English.

I mainly taught international school curricula (IGCSE, IB) and secondary school/university entrance exam preparation. A large percentage of my students sought help in bridging the gap from their local government school background to the more demanding English requirements of the British boarding schools or international schools that they wished to enter. To many of them, English was a foreign and unattainable entity. They felt uncomfortable and unconfident when tutors asked question after question in an alien language. For these students, being ‘good’ at English seemed like an impossible feat that was the exclusive preserve of the academic elite. I observed that they felt demotivated and remained silent in lessons because they firmly believed fluency was beyond their reach. Taking advantage of their insecurity, tuition centres put emphasis on the memorisation and regurgitation of sentence structures and vocabulary that supposedly showcased mastery of the English language. The selling point of one centre where I taught was its computer-based exercise programme which generates and randomises questions based on a large database. Students completed levels of questions for a sense of achievement and competition. Leong (2011, 54) suggests that the Eastern learning style of repetition and replication has its roots in the Confucian ideologies of self-discipline, duty, and obedience. However, based on their complaints and boredom, I gathered that my students did not much buy the idea of Confucianism or feel connected to our historical roots. They were forced into discipline and obedience by us and their parents. They completed the levels all right, but did they really know or care what this word means, or does this sentence structure really reflect what they want to say in their writing? No, at this tuition centre we declared that fast-track success (an A*) was guaranteed if they remembered when to use a certain structure and when to apply it in their writing (in exact order) like mathematics formulae. Instead of simplifying and familiarising students with learning English, this system robbed them of the chance to make their own meanings in writing and interpret texts in their own terms. Historically, students in China and Hong Kong have felt pressured by result-oriented examinations (Chan 1972, 16; Ho 1986; Pong and Chow 2002) and I saw that parents valued top grades and viewed them as key for a successful future. The mastery of English is equated with power and class privilege, which reproduces cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984) in education where the socioeconomically blessed students are the ‘winners’ of the system. This further alienates Hong Kong students of lower to middle-class backgrounds from the concept of becoming fully fluent in English (while pressuring students of the higher class to execute perfection), and the parental pressure of ‘getting good grades’ only exacerbates this effect. Students were overwhelmed and burdened by the magnitude of the ‘perfect’ English we were selling, and disconnected from the robotic lessons.

In a meek effort to improve my students’ experiences so that they felt less miserable being subjected to two-hour tuition sessions (on top of school and extracurricular activities), I would speak to them in Cantonese at the beginning and end of lessons. Eventually, I defied my work training, explaining terminology and difficult texts in Cantonese when continuous English did nothing to lift the confused haze from blank eyes. Without fail, their tired faces would brighten as the metaphorical lightbulb turns on in their head. ‘It was that easy, I can make the connection between this Cantonese word and this English saying!’ I could almost hear them think. Their expressions spelled the relief of recognising something familiar, and more significantly, our deepened connection now that I was not just ‘that strange woman who speaks difficult English to me’ but ‘the English tutor who also speaks Cantonese and actually asks about my life outside of these boring lessons’. Just by occasionally including their and my mother tongue into our interactions, I became closer to my students and gained their trust. They told me stories about themselves that they would not have felt secure sharing in full English – I was updated on the latest gossip by the Year 10–11s about their schoolmates’ romantic struggles, and learned about the most popular K-pop girl group members with the Year 6–7s. They were communicating with me using their cultural resources from everyday life using their most comfortable and familiar linguistic resource of Cantonese. It was a euphoric turning point in my career as I was able to improve the experience of students who had similar backgrounds to mine – I was proving to my Year 11 English teacher (who told me I was simply not good enough) that part of the job was ensuring that each student felt assured and validated in their own identity and context. I left the tuition centre behind, as a career there was incompatible with becoming an English teacher who could unleash the individual potential and worth of each student. I had a half-formed understanding on the importance of integrating students’ native languages into their English learning, and was eager to unearth more.

Studying the MA English Education programme at UCL had clarified all of these vague hypotheses pinging in my mind. As someone with only two years of non-school teaching experience, I read about and heard from other educators with the same woes. Somehow I had imagined that the British education system would be faring better than the monolithic, exam-oriented approach that was too commonly lamented in east Asia. But teachers from India and England alike struggled with balancing our hopes for students to flourish, and the learning objectives of the school or the state. The teaching of English is predominantly exam-oriented, which could stifle students’ ‘imagination, creativity, and sense of self’ (Kirkpatrick and Zang 2011, 36). Schools supposedly have it all mapped out – if students fail to obtain acceptable grades under the system, they are inferior second language learners, and and will remain those who ‘just can’t speak English well’.

I became interested in the notions of translanguaging and the communicative repertoire, as Espinet and Zaino (2022) and Shah (2013) have shown the possibility of students reflecting upon and expressing their own identity through English even when exploring canonical texts in school. The activities discussed in their research were fascinating; it had never occurred to me that incorporating different languages into English teaching could be beneficial. I also never considered how affirmation and validation of the students’ identities and cultures had such an impact on their learning. It felt refreshing to view English as a subject allowing for language communication in general (with translanguaging as the vehicle for this ideology), as opposed to simply the one-sided teaching of English language and grammar.

The amalgamation of this recent realisation and my personal experience pointed towards some questions: what was the impact of learning English being such a foreign, unreachable concept for many Hong Kong students, in arguably one of the most bilingual cities in the world? Would translanguaging be helpful for students, allowing them to find English less daunting?

Translanguaging and its significance in the classroom

Translanguaging is generally agreed to mean the speaker’s full and free deployment of all their language resources, or using ‘one’s linguistic repertoire without regard for socially and politically defined language labels or boundaries’ (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2015, 297). Translanguaging rejects the dual correspondence theory, which assumes that bi/multilinguals have separate linguistic systems for their languages, instead treating the way they process and express languages as one unitary communicative repertoire (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2019). The application of translanguaging provides students with the opportunity to actively leverage their full communicative repertoire (Rymes 2014, 24). On an institutional level, employing students’ first language (L1) in the English classroom for translanguaging is typically forbidden and discouraged. While L1 translanguaging is more feasible for multilingual teachers with a similar repertoire to their students, native English-speaking teachers’ (NETs) approaches can be grouped into three: resistant, ambivalent, and reductionistic (Jiang, Gu, and Fang 2022). Most NETs studied by Jiang, Gu, and Fang have ambivalent attitudes towards translanguaging – the value of incorporating L1 is recognised, but teacher are wary about violating English-only policies and losing their professional identity under the governmental NET scheme. The one NET observed who consciously utilised translanguaging did so in an ‘underground, carefully disguised’ way (Jiang, Gu, and Fang 2022, 16), demonstrating how translanguaging in Hong Kong is almost synonymous with guilt and rule-breaking.

The impression of shame and wrongdoing surrounding translanguaging should be questioned. English educators could benefit from acknowledging why a monolingual approach may not represent bilingual students:

The difference between monolinguals and bilinguals is that monolinguals are allowed to deploy all or most of their lexical and structural repertoire mostly freely, whereas bilinguals can only do so in the safety of environments that are sheltered from the prescriptive power of named languages. This is simply another way of saying that monolinguals are almost always and everywhere allowed to translanguage, whereas bilinguals are only allowed to translanguage in a limited number of protected settings. (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2015, 295)

I was first introduced to the concept of translanguaging through Espinet and Zaino (2022) who examined translanguaging activities used by new teachers in the context of a New York classroom. In one of the tasks, primary second grade students had the opportunity to include their native language when writing a short piece for their parents about a field trip, which allowed them to express themselves if their English was limited. Notably, it also facilitated engagement with their non-English speaking parents, so students could connect English to their own roots (Espinet and Zaino 2022, 103). Pondering the possibility of this, I remembered I had also experienced a translanguaging task myself in secondary school Year 11 for a unit on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which I shall explore in the next section. While it was not particularly striking to me as a teenager, I now recognise that structuring a creative writing activity could make space for translanguaging in my own context, and I had already experienced it.

Through an initial understanding of translanguaging, I understood the advantages of allowing students to utilise their linguistic resources fully in the classroom. My academic and professional history have both led me to evaluate the balance between identity and grades when it comes to the monolithic way that English is taught in Hong Kong. Perhaps the one-sided way of teaching is due to the remnants of British colonialism (though efforts have been made post-colonisation to move towards a more interactive pedagogy), which emphasised ‘high academic achievement in examinations, access to privileged forms of English-language education, and the extra-curricular pursuit of public and competitive English-language performance’ in Hong Kong (Burton 2010, 502). This unfortunately only intensifies the lingering image I have of ‘uneducated’ Hong Kong people learning ‘correct’ English and being liberated by the more powerful westerners. The glaring implication is that Cantonese is somehow inferior, if the goal is to teach all students the same textbook version of English while silencing their background or culture. Why would they want to learn something that feels irrelevant and unattainable to them? Therefore, translanguaging is significant and worthy of consideration in bridging this gap, and can also connect local students with their foreign teachers.

Some educators have advocated a person-oriented, learner-centred approach where learning is viewed as social semiotic work (Fielding 2006; Kress et al. 2021). The term ‘multimodal semiotic repertoires’ has been used to address how young people ‘live in a world in which they create, interpret, and use multilingual and multimodal texts that include images, videos, music, and sounds in their daily lives’ (Espinet and Chapman-Santiago 2022, 92). Various qualitative studies outside Hong Kong have shown that when popular culture images and technological tools are used in the classroom, students are empowered and given agency to represent themselves and challenge the assumption that there is only one way to speak and write in English (Espinet and Chapman-Santiago 2022; Torres et al. 2020). Where L1 translanguaging is prohibited, reductionist NETs in Hong Kong resort to ‘multisensory sensemaking’, involving bodily movements and multimodal resources in the classroom (Jiang, Gu, and Fang 2022). Doing so can contribute to students’ creativity and engagement in the classroom, yet it should go hand in hand with L1 translanguaging. It could improve the cultural perceptions and stimulate new perspectives, besides moving us away from the negativity of the exam-oriented system.

A translanguaging task I experienced in school

Currently, research on translanguaging in Hong Kong is limited, and the few published articles available are related to L1 translanguaging only in Maths or Science class. Tai shows that translanguaging in explaining challenging concepts in these subjects provides a safe space for students to draw connections between curricular and everyday knowledge, as well as aiding in the management of classroom misbehaviour (Tai 2023; Tai and Wei 2020). Yet it appears uncontested that in local government curriculum schools, L1 translanguaging either adversely affects exam results of Band 1 high achievers, or is reduced to direct Chinese instruction in lower ability Band 3 schools. And yet I have first-hand experience of a different approach. Here I present an activity I did in Year 11 as part of my International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP) English Language A class. At the time, I did not think much of it; now I see it as valuable.

Through the MYP, teachers have the freedom to devise their own assessments. The summative assessment that my teacher planned was a comic soliloquy for Twelfth Night. We had to write a 200-word soliloquy as one of the characters, to be inserted after what we considered a pivotal moment in the play, and a 250-word rationale justifying our language choices. The translanguaging part was this: we were to use Elizabethan language, but we also had to include Hong Kong cultural elements and Cantonese phrases while still maintaining the rhythm of the iambic pentameter. Our rationale had to explain the Elizabethan language choices made, along with elaborating upon the Cantonese usage and Hong Kong references. We had to make videos of ourselves performing the soliloquy, and include clips of Hong Kong.

I chose to write as Viola in Act II Scene 4, in the moment after Duke Orsino expresses feelings for Olivia, and tells Cesario (Viola in disguise) to help him woo her. The soliloquy I concocted for Viola as a 16-year-old lamented her difficult situation with overflowing romantic emotions:

Lovers will be, our share of rum,

Feast upon balls of fish and dims of sum.

If thy voice be the food of love, chew on.

…

When comes the time that thou relent and find

That trapp’d in this façade of mine,

’T is one whose destiny with thou in line.

I love you so, 你幾時先會知?

In this excerpt, I refer to the famous Hong Kong delicacies of fishballs and dim sum, and also parody Orsino’s famous line at the start of the play: ‘If music be the food of love, play on’. I filmed myself eating dim sum with my family to included the footage in the performance video. In the second excerpt, I end the soliloquy with a question in Cantonese, which means: ‘when will you know?’ in an attempt to showcase Viola’s desperation and hopelessness. The Cantonese sound for 知 (know, zi1 in Cantonese Jyutping) was included to rhyme with ‘IFC’ (International Financial Centre, a skyscraper in Hong Kong, which I also filmed to be included in the video), ‘be’, ‘empty’, and ‘LV’ (acronym used by Hong Kong people to refer to designer brand Louis Vuitton) mentioned in previous lines.

At the time, it was a challenging but curious feat: combining something I was familiar with and something I was unaccustomed to. While I still suspect that few students would willingly and wholeheartedly declare writing a Shakespearean soliloquy as a fun task, translanguaging was employed to add colour and individuality to an onerous assignment, and also for the teacher to learn about their students’ culture. I felt less detached from the English task, and summoning Elizabethan words out of thin air did not seem as burdensome. The assignment asked us to draw from our resources in Cantonese, English, and Elizabethan English, and we communicated our versions of Viola, Antonio, and other characters with unique references and phrases. The daunting sign of Shakespeare was also played with through the use of Cantonese sound to fit the rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter. Furthermore, the video task allowed us to capture cultural moments from our everyday life, instead of just agonising over grammar and vocabulary. An activity like this sends the message that the English subject is not merely about learning ‘proper’ English, but more about learning how to communicate and express students’ own stories. Based on my experience, translanguaging in a creative writing task like this – for poetry, drama, diary writing et cetera – is feasible for the teaching of literature. It would be intriguing for pupils to share their own language and culture with the class, presenting a precious chance to acknowledge and understand the identities of different students. On the other hand, in the teaching of language, where the most efficient path to fluency is highly preferred, making space for a creative translanguaging task like this may not be as simple. But I believe that translanguaging can start from individual teacher-student interactions, with worthwhile effects.

Impact and implications of English as the sole classroom language

This soliloquy task was a special case, since usually any use of Cantonese resulted in being reprimanded at my school. Cantonese did not align with the Mandarin-English bilingual vision of the international school I attended for both primary and secondary education, and as an impressionable teenager I never pondered the impact that this had on how I viewed Cantonese, my mother tongue, and my homeland. Looking back, the connotations of elitism and cultural identity instilled by this school were highly questionable. Jeon (2012) notes that schools of higher socioeconomic status and prestige in South Korea have better resources for a wider scope and longer duration of immersive English teaching programmes. In other words, students who are more financially privileged or of a higher social class may have more opportunities to utilise English. This creates a dangerous perception where English is supposedly the language of the powerful and prestigious. Across the world, and particularly in east Asia, we have put English on a pedestal as a superior language. While an immersive setting can accelerate learning or exam improvement, students are left with an unrealised but lurking impression that their native language is somehow inferior to English. This impression coloured the experience I had academically with teachers and classmates, as well as in my professional career.

One of the provisions to improve English standards in Hong Kong was the aforementioned NET scheme, which is still ongoing (Li 2011, 98). As the primary language spoken in Hong Kong is Cantonese, many of these NETs are from English-speaking Western countries. Countless institutions prefer white native English speakers to teach English and other English-medium subjects. At the international school I attended, English and other subjects were mostly taught by expatriate white NETs from United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and South Africa. It was not uncommon that during lessons we would be rebuked for speaking Cantonese amongst ourselves, as teachers could not comprehend our conversations or judged that we were badmouthing them. Their presumption that our native language is likely used to create a barrier between us and them only further alienated us from engaging in lessons and building a relationship with them. Their dismissal also implied that teachers were unwilling to acquaint themselves with our culture; the culture of where they chose to teach. Teachers’ lower levels of trust correlate with their perception of the teachability of the student (Van Maele and Van Houtte 2011). In other words, the expatriate teachers’ reluctance to allow our language in the classroom indicates that they might have judged us, the L1 Cantonese speakers, as less teachable than the L1 English speakers (who rarely spoke Cantonese in class and were hence never rebuked for Cantonese usage).

When I started work as a full-time educator myself, I encountered the shocking theory that teachers were only human. I could sympathise with their feeling more drawn to students who spoke their native language, especially as expatriates in an unfamiliar region. I had once also felt painfully lost next to my peers who spoke English at home and received more attention from teachers. But the irony was unmissable and not lost on us as children – these expatriate teachers came all the way to teach second language and bilingual students, but prioritised those who were L1 speakers. Aside from interactions with my classmates between lessons, Cantonese had a secondary status in my academic life.

It seems inevitable that many students feel disconnected from English or believe that higher grades and fluency are reserved for the favoured L1 speakers, who are at a socioeconomic and academic level too far beyond their reach. The neglect and exclusion of students’ full communicative repertoire have dehumanising insinuations that bleed into pupils’ understanding of race and class identities. This further separates them from L1 speakers, which is no wonder if they are made to feel ‘antagonistic toward their culture and lived experiences’ (Bartolomé 1994, 191). On the other hand, students can gain a sense of control and express their struggles through tapping into their own culture, which will provide teachers with opportunities to view ‘low level’ or ‘misbehaving’ students in a new light (Turvey, Yandell, and Ali 2012). It is undoubtedly a difficult endeavour for students of immigrant backgrounds to assimilate in unfamiliar English-speaking environments. Students in Hong Kong grapple with a different sort of chaotic identity (or identities) harboured through our colonial history, political situation, and bilingual context.

My academic experience suggests that removing students’ native language from their learning of English stirs up negative emotions and so distances them from their teachers and from exploring the relevance of this school subject to their everyday lives. As a teenager I was uncomfortable with the environment but often blamed myself for my insufficient effort to improve, and even at times resented my parents for not speaking fluent English. At an age where students are discovering and growing into their individuality, this distance, coupled with the inevitable adolescent desire to fit in, can easily result in insecurity and invalidation. Some teachers may argue that Chinese instruction is ineffective in helping students improve their English skills, which may be true especially in CMI schools. But on the other end of the spectrum, immersive and one-sided transmissive pedagogy of only English in the classroom can not only limit students’ full language resources and multilingual skills, but also deny their ‘expression of identity or voice’. Cummins (1992, 101) argues that by doing this, students are rendered ‘compliant consumers of information (and disinformation) rather than critical generators of knowledge’. If the goal of English education is to provide students with the tools to become critical and analytical thinkers, then a balance should be achieved between immersing students in an English environment and recognising who they are as native Cantonese speakers – regardless of the banding or categorisation of the school.

Despite an emphasis on perfecting English, bilingual Cantonese-speaking students in Hong Kong can be reluctant to speak English to one another in interactions outside of the classroom as they feel separate from the foreign subject (Li 2011, 109). This is a cycle which will lead to more one-sided English teaching. Li (2011) suggests that the goal of bilingualism or trilingualism in Hong Kong English educational policy is remote since the linguistic differences are too large between Cantonese and English. But what if we allowed students to draw their own connections between the two through translanguaging?

As a tutor – even before I knew of the concept – I had tested the impact of translanguaging in my classroom. At the tuition centre which I worked in for two years, lessons were conducted on a simultaneous one-on-one basis where up to 10 students were taught different materials suited to their needs and their school progress; I and one or two colleagues worked together to teach each two-hour session. As various students struggled with improving their English and were shy to interact when we only spoke English to them, speaking Cantonese to inquire about their interests and feelings had a gelling effect. Teachers who value learning objectives and efficiency in their pedagogy may argue that with translanguaging, the students may feel less inclined to speak or use English in the classroom. But based on my observations, translanguaging during and between lessons helped to build trust and communication. Teacher-student trust correlates with enhanced learning and higher achievement (Baker, Grant, and Morlock 2008; Bartolomé 1994; Roorda et al. 2011); it could even contribute to student identification and their sense of belonging to the school, which makes them more likely to engage with lessons (Mitchell, Kensler, and Tschannen-Moran 2018).

I was able to utilise translanguaging to increase engagement and build trust with one of my students who struggled with English speaking. Samantha¹ was a Year 7 student who made the transition from a local-curriculum primary school to an international school in Hong Kong. Her parents wished to send her to a boarding school in England, and enlisted our assistance in improving her English levels. They requested one-on-one private speaking sessions which Samantha dreaded. I would ask her questions about her life and interests to mimic a natural conversation. In the beginning, all she did was blush, giggle, and give me one word answers. The first time I made progress in these discussions was when I mentioned her favourite Korean drama, Crash Landing Onto You, in Cantonese, to which she responded enthusiastically. Her consumption of popular media is through Cantonese, so she was able to comfortably draw from that resource in our conversations. I got to know her passion for Korean dramas and video games, and she complained about her parents scolding her for trivial matters. While there were limitations to these small sessions, this small example reveals that translanguaging can start with the individual pupil and teacher at classroom level. If communication is the goal of teaching English, then why not facilitate students’ understanding of the language by activating their full language resources?

However, considering the high-stakes and fast-paced nature of private tutoring and cram schools in Hong Kong, teachers are likely (and are encouraged by their superiors) to plan lessons in a result-oriented manner. Translanguaging seems to have no room when students have numerous units and skills to catch up on. As teachers who could be limited by unique structural and systematic teaching contexts, we do not necessarily have to actively encourage the increased use of other languages in the classroom for translanguaging to fit in the curriculum. In restrictive systems where teachers do not have much leeway to alter school or state objectives, the simple combination of multimodality and translanguaging maximises students’ full communicative repertoires and establishes a significant impact on confidence, creativity, and critical thinking (Espinet and Chapman-Santiago 2022, 97; Torres et al. 2020, 28). In day-to-day interactions, we can allow for and listen intently to moments of student-student translanguaging during discussions so they can clarify and achieve deeper understanding of their ideas (while teachers can witness the colourful personalities that emerge through students’ native languages). Teachers should view translanguaging as a door to understanding the students’ culture and identity, instead of an offensive wall the students have built to shut them out. This is crucial in Hong Kong, where Cantonese-speaking students are being distanced by their own education system and negotiating their identity in a trilingual environment. These students find their own cultural and linguistic resources banned in classrooms, although those are the only materials they have to draw on learning.

Conclusion

I do not doubt that being culturally similar to my students eased my teaching process, which indicates that a mutual understanding of culture and language could motivate students more than total immersion in English. Hence for teachers working in a foreign environment, a small step out of their comfort zones in learning about local culture and language could cultivate long-term positive effects of trust and engagement that are more fulfilling than a letter or number grade. I gradually developed my practice by reflecting upon my teaching and pupils, and later became informed about translanguaging through reading and theory. As my experience and personal context were crucial to my interpretation of this topic, I realised that educators do not necessarily have to acquire all the theoretical knowledge existent in the world before applying it into practice. My methodology here draws mainly on auto-ethnography, but new understandings were found by reflecting upon my own education and practice so far. This could be seen as a reminder that educators should recall their own experiences and listen to their own students – we simply do not have all the right answers. There is no one-size-fits-all manual in any policy document that helps us perfectly navigate the unique and highly contextual relationships we have with our students.

This article has wider relevance on the cultures and identities of both students and teachers. It touches upon countering the Anglocentrism present in many education systems and its perpetuation of raciolinguistic ideologies affecting our students. It also seems particularly pressing at a time of political change in Hong Kong and other contexts that we allow students to mobilise all their linguistic and cultural resources to make their own meanings and to develop critical thinking through their learning in English. It is high time that educators regarded the expression of one’s individual culture and identity as a quality they should nurture in students, instead of secondary background noise that must be silenced.

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Notes on contributors

Vivien C. W. To

Vivien C. W. To is a student teacher completing her PGDE in Hong Kong. She recently graduated from the English Education MA at UCL’s Institute of Education.

Notes

1. All student names have been replaced with pseudonyms.