English Education, broadly defined, is the study of the teaching and learning of English teacher education. The curriculum of English Education addresses all aspects of reading and writing, including language and rhetoric, and the teaching of those entities. Historically, the field has been punctuated by contention, with debates over what texts, contexts, and approaches should be included, and has been subject to the political influences that have impacted all public education, ranging from calls for progressive approaches that are student-centered to an emphasis on standards and accountability. Intertwined with these forces have been scholars whose theories greatly affected teachers’ approaches, especially related to the teaching of literature and methods for writing. While some movements advocated for basic skills and isolated drills, others pushed for a more critical and culturally situated English Education that expanded traditional notions of literacy to include social practices. Scholarship and research in the field mirrored these trends, with much focus on preservice teacher education, secondary students’ performance, and teachers’ use of various strategies to further engage youth. Future directions for the field include more classroom-based research on how English Education can respond to the demands of our technology-saturated and media-driven society as well as longitudinal studies of English teachers from preservice through their induction years to further study the impacts of their preparation programs.
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English Education in the United States
Ashley Boyd
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Translanguaging and EFL Teaching
Zhongfeng Tian and Wei Li
Translanguaging is the capacity multilingual language users have to draw on different linguistic, cognitive, semiotic, and modal resources to make meaning and make sense, transcending the boundaries between named languages and between language and other meaning- and sense-making resources. The 21st century is a postmultilingualism era that is no longer about the harmonious parallel existence of multiple languages but about the infiltration, transgression, and subversion of boundaries that are artificially and ideologically set between languages, races, and nations. No single nation or community can claim sole ownership, authority, and responsibility for any particular language, including English, and boundaries between named languages, between languages and other communicative means, and the relationship between language and the nation-state are being constantly reassessed, broken, or adjusted. Translanguaging captures such changing dynamics and highlights the language user’s agency in exploiting their communicative repertoire holistically and in an integrated and coordinated way. When applied to English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning, translanguaging demands that not just the first language but the learner’s repertoire be visible and audible in the classroom, aiming to foster a more inclusive, equitable learning environment, especially for minoritized language speakers. Translanguaging as a pedagogical approach has been shown to deepen students’ understanding of certain content and topics, facilitate the learners’ participation and knowledge coconstruction with one another, develop their English language and literacy skills, and enhance their multilingual and multicultural awareness.
