Exploring English preparatory school instructors' reflections on translanguaging in their teaching practices

ABSTRACT Exploring English Preparatory School Instructors' Reflections on Translanguaging in Their Teaching Practices ALTAN, Enes Master's Thesis in Department of Foreign Languages Education English Language Teaching Program Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çağla ATMACA June 2025, 69 pages This study aims to investigate the perceptions of English instructors regarding the implementation of translanguaging in language teaching within a higher educational context. The participants consisted of 15 English instructors working at the English Preparatory School of the Near East University in Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This study employed a fully qualitative design with semi-structured, face-to-face interviews to reveal the participants' perceptions regarding the phenomenon of translanguaging. The interviews consisted of 15 questions to deeply understand the participants' perceptions and reveal their translanguaging practices in their classroom environments. Content analysis was employed to analyze the data, and the frequencies of the emerging themes were provided based on the participants' responses. The findings revealed that 10 of the participants were more or less familiar with the term translanguaging while five had never heard of it before participating in this study. It was also revealed that none of the participants had received any professional training on how to implement translanguaging strategically in language teaching, and their TL practices occurred rather spontaneously and in an unplanned way. The most commonly used TL strategies included the use of students' L1s, use of cognates, and translation, and the most common reasons to employ those strategies were to foster communication, clarify complex concepts, and increase student motivation. The findings also revealed that the instructors held a tendency to adjust their TL strategies based on the students' proficiency levels. Keywords: Translanguaging, code-switching, higher education, teacher perceptions, teacher beliefs, teacher education, education policies