In turn, my skills in Chinese gradually waned as I transitioned from middle school to high school. Slowly, I began mixing Chinese and English together in order to compensate for my lack of vocabulary. At first, whenever I combined the two languages, I felt like my words had more personality than when I spoke them separately. Suddenly, Chinese didn’t seem so monotonous. However, as my peers became more advanced Mandarin speakers, I slowly began feeling inferior. Many of my GWCS teachers and classmates viewed resorting to English as an inferior mode of communication, referring to the combination of Chinese and English as "useless" since native speakers wouldn’t understand it.
However, after reading Canagarajah’s work “Translingual Practice,” I realized that there are many positive aspects of combining languages. My Chinese school and my peers based their approach on studying language on the monolingual orientation. Their mindset is centered upon the ideology that languages must be separated in order for communication to be successful, a mentality that is not necessarily true.
Canagarajah emphasizes that the translingual orientation is superior to the monolingual paradigm because it embraces the diversity and the heterogeneous nature of languages, bridging the gap between Chinese and English. He asserts that translinguals are equally as articulate in speech as those who are completely fluent in two languages because language is based on far more than grammar and rote memorization. Canagarajah asserts that language also encompasses context, semiotic resources, and gestures that translinguals use to create new values and meanings. In turn, translingualism fosters a sense of “global citizenship” by embracing the differences between languages and cultures (18).
Until very recently, I also viewed code mixing with disdain; however, knowing that there is an entirely different paradigm that recognizes the cultural importance of combining languages assures me that the way I speak is representative of who I am: A Chinese-American.