ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Language Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1583494
This article is part of the Research TopicMultilingual Assessment: Insights from Psycholinguistics and Educational ResearchView all 5 articles
Insights from think-alouds on how multilingual learners engage in translanguaging in a multilingual science assessment
Provisionally accepted
- Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, United States
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This study aims to explore how multilingual learners utilize their linguistic and semiotic resources to engage in and complete a digital multilingual science assessment. A bilingual science task, accompanied by bilingual accommodations, was designed to allow students to use all their language and semiotic resources to demonstrate their understanding of the different states of matter. I employed a think-aloud method, incorporating both concurrent and retrospective protocols, to guide 15 middle school students in articulating their thoughts during the multilingual science assessment. This approach aimed to uncover how they utilized their linguistic and semiotic resources and the reasoning behind their selection of specific resources. The findings from this study provide insights into the cognitive processes and decision-making strategies of multilingual learners regarding the selection of language and semiotic resources in a multilingual content assessment. Additionally, implications for designing multilingual content assessments are also discussed.
Keywords: bilingual accommodations, multilingual assessments, multilingual learners, Think-alouds, Translanguaging
Received: 26 Feb 2025; Accepted: 14 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 López. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alexis A. López, a.lopez4@snhu.edu
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