What is Advanced Multilingual Speakers

Translanguaging is a concept that is increasingly used in multilingualism studies with disparate definitions and uses in the literature. In this chapter, students who are advanced multilingual speakers at home, school, and elsewhere are in focus. The chapter examines historical and contemporary definitions of translanguaging and shows that not all definitions view the literacy practices of advanced multilingual speakers as translanguaging. However, those that see these speakers as having a unitary linguistic system allow the literacy practices of advanced multilingual speakers to be viewed as translanguaging. Working from this perspective, the chapter argues for translanguaging writing spaces to be created in schools as a way to foster learning. The chapter also presents ways in which teachers can support the creation of these spaces in multilingual classrooms and considers how translanguaging writing spaces can be maintained when advanced multilingual speakers move to writing for monolingual readers. The challenge of this move is also discussed.