Mohammed Yassin Mohd Abashaar, Yusop Boonsuk, Nur Lailatur Rofiah
This exploratory qualitative study investigated the attitudes of Thai EFL students towards translanguaging and the translingual strategies employed by Thai university lecturers in their EFL classrooms. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with undergraduate students (n = 10) and English lecturers (n = 5) and observations of five EFL classrooms led by Thai lecturers. The data were then analysed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that Thai EFL students hold mixed attitudes towards the implementation of translanguaging in their EFL classrooms. Based on established frameworks in translanguaging pedagogy and bilingual education, the study identified a context-specific typology of five translanguaging strategies used by Thai lecturers, including concept and language elaboration, attention-drawing, feedback-giving, student-lecturer communication, and instruction-reinforcing practices. While the majority of Thai EFL lecturers believed that the integration of translanguaging might enhance the students’ understanding, they believed it would not necessarily improve their English proficiency. These findings contribute to the current body of knowledge by demonstrating the need to legitimize translanguaging as a pedagogical practice already occurring in Thai EFL classrooms across both language and content-based instruction. © 2026 National Institute of Education, Singapore.
Research Center for Language Teaching and Learning, School of Education and Liberal Arts, Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand; Faculty of Education, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani, Thailand; College of Education, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea; Department of Nonformal Education, Faculty of Education, Universitas Negeri Malang, East Java, Indonesia; Research Center for Language Teaching and Learning, School of Languages and General Education, Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand
