Translanguaging: Teachers' Perception and Practice toward A Better Language Education

ABSTRACTIn language education, linguistic diversities inside one classroom are opportunities followed with a threat. Teachers often face problems that their students cannot perform well because of the language gap between them—that is which language should or should not be used in the classroom. Translanguaging, therefore, seeks to provide opportunities and acts as a bridge for them to fully and freely use their potential on using language without being suppressed by the boundaries set by particular language setting (Otheguy et al., 2015) such as Indonesian, English, Javanese, etc. However, the origin of where translanguaging is usually applied is far cry different from Indonesian context. On this notion that the researcher decided to investigate translanguaging as a new term in Indonesian language education, particularly from the teachers’ perspective (their perception and practice). This study used descriptive qualitative design with grounded theory overtone. Through interview and observation that the data collection was conducted. The subjects were 3 English teachers in SMP Lab UM. For the findings, all the subjects pointed out a fundamental part which plays a big role in their way of teaching, including their language use, is that they are adjusting themselves with their students’ capabilities in the hope that they can maintain their students’ interest in learning English bit by bit without giving them any unnecessary pressure that can end up in failure. Keywords: translanguaging in Indonesian context, language separation, teachers’ perception, teachers’ practic