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This study investigates language teachers' translanguaging practices in three Mandarin classes of a Chinese complementary school in the UK. It draws on the ideas of translanguaging as individuals' deployment of their full linguistic repertoires, translanguaging as multimodal system, translanguaging as bilingual pedagogy, translanguaging as the embodiment of users' sociocultural background, and examines current critical perspectives on translanguaging. The study explores the actual translingual practices deployed by class teachers in language classrooms and the factors that influence those practices. In the 2016/17 academic year, I conducted an eight-month ethnographic fieldwork study, collecting qualitative data in three phases: classroom observation, classroom audio recording and interviews with class teachers. This study has five main findings: (1) translanguaging is widely, efficiently and inevitably deployed in language classrooms of the Chinese complementary school, for the purposes of teaching Chinese language knowledge (characters, Pinyin and unique expressions), differentiating students with varying Chinese language abilities, and giving general instruction within teaching practices; (2) translanguaging facilitates class teachers' other teaching practices (i.e. scaffolding, drills and translation); (3) class teachers make meaning by drawing upon their own and their learners' wide range of semiotic resources, for example, embodied gestures, pictures, signs, mime and so on; (4) the use of translanguaging is influenced by teachers' teaching content, their understanding of learners, and students' responses in class; (5) the focus of teaching content in language education where societally named languages have to be treated separately challenges an orientation towards the translanguaging concept that describes individuals' flexible use of their linguistic repertoire in language teaching contexts. Findings show that this tension might vary from class to class and teacher to teacher. The study concludes that translanguaging practice permeates into day-to-day language teaching practices in Chinese complementary schools. Compared to multililingual contexts, translanguaging is deployed critically by class teachers in language educational context.

Diabetic patients are prone to develop cataract, compared to non-diabetic patients (Kyselova et al., 2004). The global prevalence of diabetes is around 150 millions in 2004 (5% of the world population), with 1.8 million people in the United Kingdom affected (Diabetes UK, 2004). In western countries, diabetes accounts for around 12% of the total cataract population (Harding, 1999). It has been proposed that hyperglycemia is the major risk factor in diabetic cataract, and could be the starting point for all of the consequent pathological changes including, glucoxidation, glycation and activation of the polyol pathway, which finally result in diabetic complications (Sensi et al., 1995 Hotta, 1997 Brownlee, 2001). The present study aimed to characterise the mechanism of glucose transport into the aqueous humour. Using the Ussing-type chamber technique, glucose transport kinetics were characterised for the bovine CBE. The glucose fluxes were sensitive to a number of glucose transporter inhibitors including cytochalasin B ( 80% inhibition), phloretin ( 59% inhibition) and phlorizin ( 21% inhibition), and it also varied with stromal glucose concentration. In an investigation of mRNA expression using RT-PCR, GLUT1, GLUT3, GLUT4, GLUT5 and SGLT2 were found to be expressed in the bovine CBE. Due to difficulties encountered in the protein expression study, it was not possible to confirm that all of these mRNAs are translated. Nevertheless, the major glucose transport mechanism across the bovine CBE was determined to be a facilitative and carrier-mediated mode, since the glucose transport was effectively inhibited by the addition of cytochalasin B and phloretin. The transport system is likely to saturate when the plasma glucose concentration reaches 10.6 mM. These results, together with the gene expression data, may provide a new insight into devising a therapeutic strategy in the control of aqueous glucose levels which may eventually prevent the diabetic cataract formation.