Learning From One's Child

The current paper focuses on the translanguaging literacy practice of a bilingual household located in the United Kingdom. Dialogues between a Korean mother and a Korean-English child during picture book reading were collected and analyzed qualitatively. Our findings illustrated that participants engaged in translanguaging to co-translate complex concepts and terms, including onomatopoeic terms, color terms, and historical terms. Through a collaborative process of translanguaging, both parent and child were able to acquire new words and concepts. Furthermore, multiple resources were used in coordination to enrich linguistic and cultural learning. The study’s findings showed that mutual contribution is an integral part of a multilingual family’s translanguaging practices. The best learning is not one-directional but occurs when both parties learn from each other.