Learning Multiple Languages in an Instructional Setting: Insights from the Study of Affordances and from the Conceptualization(s) of Translanguaging

Multilingualism has entered a new phase of importance in the modern world. In education this is visible, for instance, in terms of the number and variety of languages on curricula. Moreover, in many jurisdictions, the proportion of multilingual students in classrooms has increased substantially (Aronin and Ó Laoire, 2004; Edwards, 2009). This has created a new classroom dynamic, full of opportunities and challenges. There is longstanding evidence of students of multiple languages making use of available affordances in their language learning (Singleton & Aronin, 2007). More recently, the notion of translanguaging has emerged and has developed in multiple directions (Singleton & Flynn, 2022). Our contention is that in an instructional environment, translanguaging insights can be usefully wedded to the notion of affordances to optimize the provision of learning opportunities.