ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author traces certain developments drawn from second language reading research, and discusses what a translingual approach to reading might look like, and, more broadly, how instructors in US classrooms can nurture our students’ translingual transnational literacies. A translingual approach to literacy begins with the assumption that a student’s entire language repertoire is potentially implicated in any act of reading or writing, and that in the course of interacting with a text, students will necessarily negotiate from multiple identity positions. A translingual reader interacts with a text by choosing among multiple negotiated identities and positions to perform a creative act of reading. Translingual economies of reading imply a revaluation of the notion of a “target” language, and indeed of language “proficiency” per se. Translingual reading can take place anywhere, including when the reader is immersed in their original cultural location, for example in a foreign language class.
