Making Translanguaging Work Under Exam Pressure: A Co-Design Study in Rural Vietnamese EFL Classrooms

Abstract

Translanguaging is increasingly advocated in TESOL, yet examination-oriented EFL classrooms often maintain English-only participation and assessment norms that constrain multilingual pedagogy. This qualitative co-design study examined how translanguaging-informed participation-and-assessment routines were developed, enacted, and refined under examination pressure and institutional accountability in rural Vietnamese EFL classrooms. Conducted over 12 weeks in three upper-secondary schools in Vietnam's Central Highlands, the study involved three EFL teachers as practitioner co-design partners and 45 students (15 per grade across Grades 10–12), whose experiences and feedback informed a baseline diagnostic phase and three iterative plan–enact–reflect cycles. Data comprised 21 classroom observations, six teacher interviews, nine student focus groups, reflective journals, student work samples, and co-design artefacts, analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Findings revealed that teachers gradually reframed assessment fairness from equal English exposure towards differentiated participation opportunities and recognisable evidence of English learning. Students reported reduced participation anxiety, greater willingness to attempt English production, and stronger recognition of their linguistic identities, although these experiences varied across learners. Translanguaging-informed practices became more pedagogically workable when multilingual planning, multimodal scaffolding, and structured collaboration were connected to English-facing outputs and visible assessment evidence. Drawing on these findings, the study proposes the Translanguaging Participation-and-Assessment Infrastructure (TPAI) Model, comprising six interconnected dimensions: four classroom mechanisms—sequenced multilingual planning, multimodal scaffolding, structured collaborative participation, and visible feedback and assessment—and two enabling conditions—negotiated pedagogical legitimacy and adaptive teacher reflexivity. The model offers a provisional, context-sensitive explanation of how multilingual pedagogy may become more accessible, assessable, and institutionally defensible, while its long-term sustainability remains uncertain.