Translanguaged lexical-pragmatic scaffolding makes pragmatic vocabulary knowledge visible in Jordanian EFL classrooms

Mohamad Almashour, Hesham Aldamen, Mutasim Al-Deaibes, Rami Alsharefeen

This study examines translanguaged lexical-pragmatic scaffolding in Jordanian secondary EFL classrooms. Vocabulary teaching often makes translation, recognition, and controlled sentence use visible, while pragmatic usability remains less inspectable. Using a non-experimental, embedded mixed-methods case design, the study traced how Arabic-English classroom movement mediated selected English lexical items beyond form-meaning recognition. Data came from three anonymized schools, four Grade 10–11 EFL classes, and 120 learners. The evidence base included 20 audio-recorded lessons, 51 lexical-pragmatic teaching episodes, fieldnotes, 40 textbook or teacher-material records, worksheets, quizzes, exam-oriented artifacts, 20 stimulated-recall excerpts, and learner lexical-pragmatic tasks at three time points. Analysis combined episode coding, materials and assessment analysis, descriptive task-score analysis, reliability checks, and item-level cross-source comparison. Results indicated that materials and assessment artifacts made meaning, grammar, and controlled use more visible than stance, relational positioning, and metapragmatic explanation. Arabic-English movement became most clearly lexical-pragmatic when it extended semantic translation toward register marking, contrastive explanation, metapragmatic explanation, repair, and production support. Learner task-score patterns showed short-term, uneven variation across items and dimensions. The study offers a bounded account of multilingual classroom mediation as a resource for making pragmatic vocabulary use teachable and partially assessable.