| المستخلص: |
Immigrant communities settling in multicultural societies, such as Australia, strive to maintain their heritage language and for this they establish their ethnic schools. However, in the past, research has treated ethnic schools as primarily operating in the heritage language, and little attention has been paid to translanguaging, which occurs and the role it plays in enhancing learning. The aim of this study was to acquire a better understanding of the discursive practices of bilinguals particularly in ethnic language schools. It aimed to contribute to language classroom pedagogy and raise awareness of translanguaging through examining the role that it plays in heritage language classrooms contexts and beyond. To achieve a more holistic picture of their language ecology, this study examined how motivations, identities and attitudes factor in language choices and heritage language maintenance and shift of members of an Arabic-Islamic school community in Australia. This study used a mixed methods approach that drew extensively on meta-discourse data about their use of their languages. Data were collected from two sets of resources: (1) semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 16 students and 8 teachers; and (2) ethnographic observations of classroom interactions over 12 weeks. The data highlighted multilingualism as a complex process influenced by several personal, interactional and social factors. Bilingual speakers negotiate their different linguistic repertoires in a mobilized and dynamic way during interactions to achieve various purposes and to overcome language barriers. Translanguaging was used as a scaffolding strategy to enhance Arabic learning and develop students’ various academic, social and communicative skills. Hence, adopting a holistic plurilingual perspective in studying and teaching languages helps provide bilingual speakers with the type of education that takes into account their linguistic and social background as well as their pluralistic resources of knowledge. The data also identified strong factors that lead to maintaining Arabic, particularly in the Arabic-Muslim ethnic community in Australia. Arabic fulfills various religious and integrative functions, which reflect Arabic preservation in Australia. This asserted the significance of working on a more productive analysis of the ways individuals use their multiple resources to understand the ecology of language use and maintenance in diverse communities.
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