Translingual Spoken Word Poetry in English for Academic Purposes Online Learning

Translingual Spoken Word Poetry in English for Academic Purposes Online Learning Translingual Spoken Word Poetry in English for Academic Purposes Online Learning

Abstract

This study explores how translingual spoken word poetry shapes language learning and meaning-making practices in an online English for Academic Purposes course during the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Situated in a Canadian postsecondary institution, the research responds to the persistent dominance of monolingual, form-focused pedagogies that marginalize multilingual students and their affective experiences. Drawing on a framework of translanguaging for critical multilingual language awareness, the study positions language as socially, culturally, and relationally situated, emphasizing emotion as integral to multilingual meaning-making. A qualitative, exploratory design was employed with fifteen advanced English for Academic Purposes students, using course artifacts, weekly journals, spoken word poetry collections, and semi-structured interviews. Analysis revealed three interrelated themes: one, a shift from grammatical correctness toward meaning-making, enabling authentic self-expression; two, emotional and translingual creativity, where students drew on diverse linguistic and multimodal resources to articulate personal, cultural, and affective experiences; and three, reciprocal and relational engagement, highlighting students' attention to audience, collaboration, and connection. Findings demonstrate that spoken word poetry curricular activities fosters linguistic flexibility, emotional agency, and critical awareness of metalinguistic difference. The study contributes to English for Academic Purposes pedagogy by illustrating how translingual spoken word poetry practices can humanize language learning, challenge deficit-oriented norms, and cultivate more inclusive, relational, and culturally affirming classrooms.

Introduction

English-dominant countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia are often framed as "academic superpowers" attracting growing numbers of international students. As Global North higher education expands, academic English instruction has gained importance. In Canada, over seventy university-based English for Academic Purposes programs serve international students seeking entry into degree programs who have not yet met English proficiency requirements. However, these programs often operate in the margins of university life and English for Academic Purposes students are frequently positioned as deficient users of English, rather than as multilingual individuals with complex linguistic repertoires.

Within this context, a longstanding debate in English for Academic Purposes concerns whether instruction should prioritize general academic competencies or discipline-specific language practices. Proponents of general competencies note that even within a single discipline, students engage in diverse genres and communicative contexts, making narrow skill-based instruction insufficient. While scholars differ on how disciplinary content should be incorporated, there is broad agreement that English for Academic Purposes programs aim to prepare students for the linguistic demands of postsecondary education. Since the twenty-tens, trans-scholarship (e.g., translanguaging, translingualism, translingual practice) has prompted rethinking by challenging entrenched linguistic and cultural boundaries. Translanguaging as theory, pedagogy, and political stance, aims to dismantle language hierarchies and reposition students' everyday language practices as assets. Despite its benefits, translanguaging remains underexplored in English for Academic Purposes, where monoglossic ideologies and skills-based approaches dominate.

Responding to a dearth of critical, translingual practice and research, the present study examines spoken word poetry activities implemented in an online English for Academic Purposes classroom in twenty twenty-one during the COVID-nineteen pandemic and the rapid shift to online teaching. Spoken word poetry is a multimodal, performance-based art form integrating writing, speaking, emotion, and embodied expression

Arts-based approaches, such as spoken word poetry, offer promising potential to disrupt dominant academic language norms, legitimize multilingual and affective ways of knowing, and create spaces for students to engage with language as a lived, relational, and emotionally situated practice. Aligning with calls to humanize language teaching by attending to students' linguistic, cultural, and emotional realities and foregrounding student wellbeing in English for Academic Purposes settings, this study explores how spoken word poetry creates creative, relational spaces for language engagement and meaning-making. The research question is:

How does engaging with translingual spoken word poetry in an online English for Academic Purposes course shape students' language learning and meaning-making practices?