An Early Look into Leveraging the Home Language for Biliteracy in the LESLLA Context

Situated in a pilot project exploring biliteracy teaching and learning with adult L2 learners with emergent literacy, this practitioner paper describes what the home language literacy lessons of a Nepali learner, Renuka, looked like in an early phase of the pilot. SLA has recognized the value of strategic L1 use in target language learning (Wrigley, 2003), and LESLLA researchers have identified a biliteracy pedagogical approach as an important area for future research. In the micro-context of the present study, this paper considers the potential for a biliteracy approach to promote crosslinguistic transfer (particularly metalinguistic skills), and to support teacher awareness of learners’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992). It further explores the promise of an in-depth intake process, and increased teacher observational skills to support practitioner-learner conversation about literacy and learning. By sharing our work, we hope to reignite discussion around the potential of a biliteracy approach with LESLLA learners.