ABSTRACT
As higher education around the world experiences a boom in internationalization, countries where English is used as a primary language have seen an even more dramatic increase in the numbers of international students. In addition, universities in European, Asian, Latin American, and Pacific countries embrace the international agenda. With that, pathway courses have gained greater importance and status, which justifies a broader interest in such English language courses and, consequently, the frameworks underlying their design.
Despite the growing focus on internationalization in higher education and the language diversity it brings to universities, this type of ESL program remains deeply rooted in linguistic purism. This chapter will argue that translanguaging practices (1) allow teachers to be creative even within a preceptive curriculum, (2) offer a voice to students who would otherwise be silenced during the teaching/learning process as they legitimate the use of students’ full repertoire as they draw on all their language resources to communicate and make meaning. The chapter will also describe how I have approached and reinterpreted the prescriptive curriculum in a direct-entry university pathway so that it would both allow my students’ voices to be heard and encourage the use of their full repertoires.
