Teacher views on translanguaging practices and teaching methods for vocabulary teaching – A qualitative study of four Swedish upper secondary school teachers of English

Sammanfattning: This essay explores four English teachers’ views on their methods of teaching vocabulary, as well as the incorporation of translanguaging in their teaching of English vocabulary. The study investigates what the teachers’ preferred methods of teaching vocabulary are and whether they rely more on implicit or explicit vocabulary teaching. Furthermore, the study explores if the participating teachers draw on languages other than English when teaching English vocabulary, and whether or not their practices are aligned with previous multilingualism and vocabulary research. Semi-structured interviews with four Swedish upper secondary school teachers of English at three different schools in the south of Sweden were conducted and analyzed through a qualitative content analysis. The results showed that the participating teachers had different methods of teaching vocabulary, with two teachers focusing more on intentional vocabulary learning and a specific vocabulary focus, and the others relying heavily on incidental vocabulary learning, and less of an explicit focus on vocabulary, where the two who taught explicitly were more aligned with previous research. Furthermore, the results showed that all four teachers used a monolingual approach in the classroom but allowed their students to draw on other languages when working independently with vocabulary. This practice is partly in line with the translanguaging pedagogy and the idea of including students entire linguistic repertoire in their teaching.