Given how prominent writing in English is in our globalized world, it is no wonder that EFL students’ writing skills have been the focus of many educational researchers in the past decades (see Javadi-Safa, 2018 for an overview). Writing in English is an essential skill and mastering it can determine students’ future academic career (Ortega, 2009). Building on recent translanguaging research, mainly emanating from the UK and the US, there are multiple benefits to using a translanguaging pedagogy for teaching writing (see Leung & Valdés, 2019 for overview). Although the Swedish National Board of Education is now fully endorsing such a pedagogy, by supplying articles with guidance to English language teachers, only one study so far has investigated classroom practices of EFL students from a translanguaging perspective in our schools (Källkvist et al., 2022) and none have centered on the use of translanguaging space in the teaching of writing to year-9 EFL students. In Sweden, the skill of writing is crucial in year 9, as the students have national exams in English, a gate-keeping test which may impact on their entry into upper secondary school. Following a sociocultural approach to teaching and learning, the current study addresses the research gap in EFL writing in Sweden through a design intervention covering six lessons. Using the curriculum cycle (Derewianka, 1991) as a starting point, lessons were planned taking into account recent findings of classroom translanguaging research and were executed by researcher and lead teacher conjointly. For five of the lessons, students were presented with writing tools, the main tool being their previously learnt languages, to assist them in the process of generating ideas and solving problems in their writing, while the sixth lesson was reserved for essay writing entitled A Good Life (a national exam used in the past). 

While one of the objectives of the study was to design the six lessons included in the intervention as a module for teachers to employ, the second objective was to discover how the main tool of language is used by multilingual students to interact and to solve writing tasks in the classroom. Last, but not least, the third objective was to allow students to write an essay without restrictions on tools. When students are presented with the written part of the national exam in Sweden, they receive the topic minutes before writing, are allowed no software tools, such as spell- or grammar check, and internet access is disabled. In this artificial scenario, a lot of pressure is placed on 15-year-old students to produce text in a language that is not their first. Therefore, the present study was designed to see how students would fair, when not only all tools were allowed, but when students had also received an inventory of tools based on previous research and received training in how to use them. 

With these three objectives in mind, the study was guided by two research questions: 1) How do students use their language repertoires to interact when provided with translanguaging space to solve writing tasks? and 2) Which tools do students prefer to use when all resources are allowed and how does allowing all possible resources impact students’ experience and final product?

Methodology The present study employs a design intervention to test a teaching innovation based on theory and empirical data in two year-9-classes. A design study is cyclical in that it seeks to improve or change a situation based on the feedback of the participants involved (Brown, 1992). What this study seeks to change are the conditions of the writing exam in year 9, to concur with the students’ academic future wherein exam topics are known well in advance and common computer features such as dictionaries, spell- and grammar check are allowed. Furthermore, the study is exploratory as it seeks to understand how students’ use their linguistic repertoires in interaction when solving classroom writing tasks. Previous studies involving a translanguaging framework and current educational policy documents were used as foundation in our planning, along with our mutual experience-based knowledge and sociocultural theory of learning. Using Derewianka’s (1991) teaching model, the curriculum cycle, allowed us to distinguish four phases in the instruction of writing. Briefly, the four phases consist of: 1) building knowledge on the topic; 2) exploring texts within the genre; 3) joint construction of a text; and 4) individual writing. The curriculum cycle aligns well with sociocultural theory of learning as the students are expected to learn through interaction and are given support by a teacher or more capable peer in the initial stages of teaching. All six lessons were audio- and video recorded using three camera angels (back of the classroom facing the front, left flank facing middle and front, right flank facing middle and front) and six Dictaphones, two of which were equipped with lapel microphones used by lead teacher and researcher. The design intervention was preceded by an observation of the lead teacher's instruction to prepare students for the writing part of the national test. The pre-intervention writing instruction was based on a past national test, entitled A Letter to Connect. To map students linguistic profiles a background questionnaire was employed. On the sixth intervention lesson the students proceeded to write a second exposition essay entitled A Good Life after which a second questionnaire was distributed with questions concerning the lessons and the end product. Additionally, two focus group interviews were held with a group of students from each class to shed light on their experience of the lessons and of their writing process.

Conclusions Due to the pandemic, only 47 students completed both writing tasks, A Letter to Connect before the intervention lessons, and A Good Life on the sixth intervention lesson. Although results cannot be extrapolated to contexts outside of the current study, and multiple factors involved in teaching makes it difficult to say anything about the causal relationships between students' learning and outcome, it is still interesting to note that 36 students (76.5%) received a higher grade on the second writing task. Video- and audio-recorded interaction in the English classroom show students using named languages, such as Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, English, French, German and Spanish to carry out tasks when translanguaging space was offered. These languages were used flexibly to discuss word choice, the concept of A Good Life and to build a word wall to be used as a resource while writing the final essay. Findings from observations and interviews suggests increased motivation and interest in fellow students as a result of low status languages being accredited with value in the classroom. In evaluation of the lessons, students acknowledge the benefits of learning about the topic, A Good Life, through interaction. The tasks set in the classroom led to students feeling inspired with regards to the content of their future essays, gaining ideas from fellow classmates. While writing their essays during the final lesson, students say they gave more thought to structure, word choice and enriching their text with details. In the interviews, several of the students mention feeling safe, relaxed and more able to produce an essay in English. Interestingly, students report feeling less of a need to employ tools, such as dictionaries, online resources and computer features, simply because they were allowed to. Pedagogical implications of these findings will be discussed.

References Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The journal of the learning sciences, 2(2), 141-178. Derewianka, B. (1991). Exploring how texts work. Primary English Teaching Association. Javadi-Safa, A. (2018). A brief overview of key issues in second language writing teaching and research. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 6(2), 12-25. Källkvist, M., Gyllstad, H., Sandlund, E., & Sundqvist, P. (2022). Towards an in-depth understanding of English-Swedish translanguaging pedagogy in multilingual EFL classrooms [Elektronisk resurs]. In (Vol. 48, pp. 138-167). HumaNetten. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.15626/hn.20224807 Leung, C., & Valdés, G. (2019). Translanguaging and the transdisciplinary framework for language teaching and learning in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 103(2), 348-370. Ortega, L. (2009). Studying writing across EFL contexts: Looking back and moving forward. InManchón, R. (ed) Writing in foreign language contexts: Learning, teaching and research (pp. 232255). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.