Paper Multimodal Literacy In Language Classroom.docx

What is Literacy? Literacy, defined most simply, is the ability to read and write. UNESCO, for example, defines literacy as "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” But even this definition, now a decade old, fails to articulate how literacy might change in an “information age.” Technology The word technology, as it is used herein, generally refers to communication using computers and the internet, though this communication could also be done via mobile phone. McGrail (2006) in a study of secondary school language teachers’ attitudes toward technology writes: The term technology, as it applies in this study, is associated predominantly with computer technology, electronic communication (the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms), and multimedia design tools (digital audio and video). The definition is inclusive in that it embraces the machine-hardware and its peripherals (printers, scanners or servers), software (Inspiration, PowerPoint or Censor [a central monitoring system]) and educational applications (multimedia presentations, online discussions of reading). We take McGrail’s defi nition as this is very much what language students and teachers think of as technology. Given these definitions, a key question is: how has technology changed the way we teach and learn literacy? According to the New London Group there are two main changes that we must keep in mind: First, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. (New London Group, 1996: 62–63) What the New London Group means here is that globalization has fundamentally altered our classrooms by making them more diverse. For instance in a typical classroom in South London it is likely that there are children from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, and that their dominant home languages are not English. The depth of diversity is increasing in classrooms all over the world as one of the processes in globalization is the flow of large numbers of people through increasingly porous national boundaries. Second, a text or a page of text does not look the way it looked before the technology revolution that happened around the 1960s. A text in today’s classroom is likely to be a projected web page. A ‘text’ of this kind is likely to include some printed text but it might also feature other elements, for example, sounds, images, animations and colors that contribute both singly and collectively to the meanings conveyed. The use of technology in the classroom gives rise to texts, which often call for ‘new literacies’ as compared with ‘old literacies’ (Luke, 2002).

Then, what is New Literacy? “New literacies” that arise from new technologies include things like text-messaging, blogging, social networking, podcasting, and videomaking. These digital technologies alter and extend our communication abilities, often blending text, sound, and imagery. Although connected to older, “offline” practices, these technologies change what it means to both “read” and “write” texts. (They change the meaning of “text,” as well.)

These rise of “new literacies” necessary to wield these new technologies effectively place new demands on all of us – not just on students. We are all expected to move much more quickly to identify problems, for example; to know where to find information to help us address those problems – often on our own; to evaluate and synthesize information from a number of sources in order to try to solve those problems; to communicate with others about problems and potential solutions; and to monitor the solutions we’ve found and stay up-to-date with new issues as they arise. We are increasingly expected do these tasks via the Internet, of course, to address elements of our professional and our personal lives. We do this as students, teachers, workers, and citizens alike. For educators, this must involve a more sophisticated response than the Internet is “good” or “bad.” Moreover, it isn’t just a matter of thinking about potentially different cognitive experiences of reading digital versus print materials (although there is a growing body of research to that end). It’s about thinking about how students “move through” materials as they read and research and how digital materials make that a fundamentally different process.

Learners & New Literacies University of Connecticut’s Donald Leu (PDF) has made several observations about these new literacies: Online research and comprehension is a self-directed process of text construction and knowledge construction. Five practices appear to define online research and comprehension processing: (1) identifying a problem and then (2) locating, (3) evaluating, (4) synthesizing, and (5) communicating information. Online research and comprehension is not isomorphic with offline reading comprehension; additional skills and strategies appear to be required. Online contexts may be especially supportive for some struggling readers. Adolescents are not always very skilled with online research and comprehension. Collaborative online reading and writing practices appear to increase comprehension and learning.

Number 5 on this list in particular highlights how dangerous the myth of the “digital native” can be – this idea that students born in an information age are somehow naturally or automatically predisposed to understand new information technologies. It is true (according to research from the Pew Research Center) that many teens now lead “tech-saturated lives”: 95% use the Internet. 78% have cell phones. 80% have a desktop or laptop. 81% use social networking sites. But that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily highly skilled when it comes to these new literacies. And as Leu points out too, having “traditional” literacy skills isn’t an indicator of having these new proficiencies either. Relation between New Literacy and the Classroom How will the role of educators change with the rise of new literacies? With a world of digital materials at students’ fingertips, traditional instructional materials like textbooks are no longer canonical. But that doesn’t mean that the role of the educator is necessarily diminished. To the contrary, educators could be even more important as they guide students through the contexts of learning materials, not simply the content. Again, as Leu points out, collaborative practices seem to help boost learning.

This has profoundly important implications for educators’ professional development, something that cannot be addressed by treating new technologies as new instructional tools. Educators must develop these new literacies themselves – for themselves – before they can support students in developing them for themselves. Educators must learn to engage with new technologies and the literacy practices surrounding them (by blogging, for example, or by gaming). New literacies will bring about new challenges for schools, because in no small part, new technologies (and the cultural practices around them) are changing incredibly quickly. All this in turn raises important questions about how – indeed, whether – new literacies “fit” into current school practices, and how schools will respond. Multimodality

‘multimodality’ – a term which refers to the practice of meaning-making involving the purposeful integration of semiotic resources including, but by no means restricted to, writing, images, speech, gestures, drawing and sound (Emmison & Smith, 2000; Kress, 2003; The New London Group, 1996; van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001). In this definition it is important to note the difference between ‘medium’ and ‘mode’. Nelson (2006) points out that these terms often get confused. Medium refers to the way that technology gets disseminated, for instance through a printed book, CD-ROM or computer application, while mode refers to print, gesture, sound, color and other forms of meaning-making. The notion of meaning-making is central to the examination of multimodality. Lemke (1998) points out that the various modes which interplay with the printed text, like sound, gesture and so on are not merely decorative add-ons to a text in which meaning is derived mainly from the printed word. In a multimodal text, for instance a web-page, all the modes that interplay with each other are

integral to meaning ‘making the whole far greater than the simple sum of its parts’ (Lemke, 1998: 284). Lemke goes on to argue that the major change that technology has made in literacy is a move beyond logocentrism or an overemphasis on the printed word. However, now that texts are becoming multimodal, it is important to move beyond language and recognize that the printed word is just one of the modes in a set of modes that represent meaning. With the heterogeneity and hybridity of present-day texts, a central concern in any theory of meaning-making is to understand the implications of multimodality (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 2000, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Nelson, 2006). As Cope and Kalantzis explain: Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal – in which written-linguistic modes of meaning are part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns of meaning. Take for instance, the multimodal ways in which meanings are made on the World Wide Web, or in video captioning, or in interactive multimedia, or in desktop publishing, or in the use of written texts in a shopping mall. To find our way around this emerging world of meaning requires a new, multimodal literacy. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2001: para. 4)

What is Multimodal Literacy? 

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Multimodal literacy “focuses on the design of discourse by investigating the contributions of specific semiotic resources (e.g. language, gesture, images) codeployed across various modalities (e.g. visual, aural, somatic), as well as their interaction and integration in constructing a coherent text.” “The multimodal approach takes into account how linguistic and visual (and other) choices fulfill the purposes of the text, the audience and context, and how those choices work together in the organisation and development of information and ideas.” “As educators, we need to develop the knowledge and pedagogy to teach multimodal literacy. We cannot assume that just because our young are growing up in a media-rich world, they will be able to view multimodal representations critically and not be naive consumers of media texts.”

“1st Dimension of Multimodal Literacy: Media Literacy The first dimension is with respect to the prevalence of multimodal texts, specifically through multimedia texts afforded by the digital media, hence stressing the need for a literacy to produce and access information. Multimodal literacy acknowledges the significance of all the semiotic resources and modalities in meaning making. The semiotic resources are not reduced to paralinguistic resources which are ancillary to language, but are viewed as semiotic resources that are conferred the same status as language and are just as effective in semiosis. (Developed primarily on foundational ideas in social semiotics, ‘multimodal literacy’ is a term used by Jewitt and Kress (2003) to refer to the different ways in which meanings can be created and communicated in the world today. As Baldry and Thibault (2005) expound, the process of designing,

representing and interpreting modalities involves the constant interplay between the attributes of semiotic resources as they integrate or combine. In this respect it is important to understand that different semiotic modalities have varying organizational principles for creating meanings. For example, a printed page may feature type-written language and support the logical arrangement of items accompanied by spatial positioning (right, left, top, middle, bottom and so on). Alternatively, a graphical representation is more apt for portraying concepts such as (relative) volume, shape and directional vectors.)

The functional affordances and constraints of each semiotic resource and their contribution to the multimodal discourse are considered as well. As O’Halloran & Smith (in press-b) reflect, “[d]ifferent semiotic resources bring with them their own affordances and constraints, both individually and in combination, as well as analytical challenges in terms of the natures of these media, the detail and scope of analysis, and the complexities arising from the integration of semiotic resources across media”. For instance, Kress (1999: 79) argues that language “is necessarily a temporally, sequentially organized mode… [t]he visual by contrast is a spatially and simultaneously organized mode”. Following from this, it can be inferred that a ‘multimodal literate’ student must thus be sensitised to the meaning potential and choices afforded in the production of the text, rendering an enhanced ability to make deliberate and effective choices in the construction and presentation of knowledge. Armed with such an understanding, students will not only become discerning consumers of multisemiotic texts but they also will become competent producers of multimodal texts themselves. 2nd Dimension of Multimodal Literacy: Multisemiotic Experience The second dimension concerns the recognition that the experience of teaching and learning is intrinsically multisemiotic and multimodal. As O’Toole (1994: 15) observes, we ‘read’ people in everyday life: facial features and expression, stance, gesture, typical actions and clothing”. While new media technology has foregrounded the multimodal nature of our communication, meanings have always been constructed and construed multimodally through the use of semiotic resources like language and corporeal resources such as gesture and postures across different sensory modalities through sight, smell, taste and touch. Norris (2004: 2) observes that “all movements, all noises, and all material objects carry interactional meanings as soon as they are perceived by a person”. In this sense, all interaction is multimodal. Our communication is more than what is said and heard but by what we perceive through expressions, gazes, gestures and movements. Hence, there is a need to understand how the lesson experience is constructed through the teacher’s use of a repertoire of semiotic resources as embodied in his/her pedagogy. Appreciating the functional affordances and constraints of these semiotic resources and modalities as well as how they are co-deployed in the orchestration of the lesson can

provide understandings which may lead to more effective teaching and learning in the classroom (see, for example, Lim, 2010, Lim, O’Halloran & Podlasov, submitted for publication, Lim, forthcoming). From the dual perspectives of multimodal literacy in multimodal text and in multisemiotic experience, the infusion of multimodal literacy has two aspects. They are 1) the inculcation of multimodal discourse analysis skills for students and 2) the sensitisation in the use of multimodal resources (the affordances and constraints each bring, their orchestration (contextualising relations) and their potential to shape the lesson experience) in the classroom for teachers.” O’Halloran, K. L. & Lim, F. V. (2011). Dimensioner af Multimodal Literacy. Viden om Læsning. Number 10, September 2011, pp. 14-21. Nationalt Videncenter for Laesning: Denmark” Multimodal Literacy Practices, Language Classrooms and Teacher Education Research findings in the area of multimodal literacy in language classrooms can be broadly classifi ed into two strands: multimodal literacy practices outside the classroom though with implications for in class literacy, and multimodal literacy practices situated specifi cally in the language classroom. Multimodal literacy practices out of school Black (2005) use ‘Multiliteracies’ as a theoretical framework to explore the way adolescents use literacy outside the classroom. Black’s (2005) study is about fanfiction, though her focus is on female English Language Learners (ELLs). Black was compelled to explore fanfiction because she was very curious about how her students could spend hours writing such texts on the computer though they were reluctant to write a one-page essay during the English class. Black uses the idea of ‘design’ from the New London Group by which they refer to aspects of literacy that extend beyond the decoding and encoding of print. According to the New London Group there are Available Designs, meaning received modes of meaning, which through Designing can become The Redesigned. ‘Designing’ is the transformation of these modes of meaning in their hybrid and intertextual use. The key difference between Design and writing is that the former is not confined to print and words but is multimodal. This literacy practice is very appealing to language learners because they do not have to depend only on printed words to get their meaning across but can use multiple modes for meaning- making. Black also explores how writers review each other’s stories on this site and offer feedback so that they can improve their craft. The reviewers on this site are extremely encouraging with their peers, and though they correct grammar and elements of composition that impede understanding, they also offer positive feedback and ask for more chapters from the author. Black finds that this creates a strong sense of audience for writers who feel that there is someone eagerly waiting to read what they have written. Thus, the emphasis of the reviewers is on the communicative function of language instead of error correction. According to Jenkins et al. (2006), today’s teens are involved in ‘participatory culture’ where there are low barriers to artistic and civic engagement, strong peer support and mentorship. Forms of participatory culture include:

• Affiliations: memberships in online communities such as Friendster and Facebook; • Expressions: new text forms such as zines and fanfi ction; • Collaborative Problem Solving: working in teams to complete tasks; and • Circulations: shaping the fl ow of media such as podcasting and blogging. The implication of participatory culture on literacy is that technology has created learning environments very different from the traditional classroom. Whereas the classroom can be a formal, print-based forum, which valorizes individual achievement, participatory cultures provide for environments that are informal, collaborative and multimodal. Whereas the classroom emphasizes literacies, like the five-paragraph essay, which is a text somewhat removed from the workplace, participatory cultures are about new literacies, which are potentially linked with the workplace. Multimodal literacy practices in school One of the results of the widespread use of technology as it impacts schools is the increasing number of one–to-one laptop programs (a program in which each student is given one laptop) in the United States. Education Week reports that about 800 schools in the United States already have laptop programs through the Anytime Anywhere Learning initiative launched by Microsoft Corp. and Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. in 1996. Myers et al. (1998) explore the way five different groups of English teacher education students and one group of seventh graders authored ‘hypermedia’. For the authors the word hypermedia, coined from multimedia and hypertext, means the use of multiple linked windows on the computer screen. In this project, the students used a Macintosh-based software called StorySpace as the hypermedia authoring tool and other software to digitize sound, and image and create original Quicktime videos. The task for the undergraduates was to use hypermedia to explore interpretations of literature whereas for the seventh graders it was learning about poetic devices or reading biographies of famous people. One example of student work the authors document is that a group of students produced a series of representations of Native American women with the specific goal of challenging the Disney representation of Pocahontas. The authors analyze a series of such results on the basis of ‘criticality’, which they take to mean a questioning of existing power relations. They conclude that the students, through the juxtaposition of multimedia texts (i.e. music, photos, videos), were better able to deconstruct texts and represent the complexities of power. The authors are convinced that ‘As they [the students] selected images, sounds, and print, oppositional representations became ideologically framed identities, knowledge came from within the activity of authoring and socially negotiating interpretations, personal subjectivity became an act of choosing from various valued possibilities’ (Myers et al., 1998: 78). Teacher education McGrail (2006) and Russell and Abrams (2004) research focus on on the way language teachers deal with multimodal literacy and what they feel about it. McGrail discovered that teachers were ambivalent about the use of technology. First, they resisted the top-down approach to this

technology initiative and did not think that their opinions or voice were heard. Second, and this is a point also taken up by Russell and Abrams (2004), the teachers saw a disconnect between writing on the computer and standardized testing, which was always pen-and-paper based. Third, the teachers also felt that using the internet extensively resulted in plagiarism and shallow presentations in Powerpoint. Fourth, the English teachers were not sure how to use technology in many of their lessons, which they felt were much better taught or equally well taught without technology. Finally there were problems regarding teacher identity as many of the older teachers were themselves not comfortable with technology. In a one of a kind large-scale intervention study, Becker and Ravitz (1999) found that the use of technology over a period of about three years changes the pedagogy of teachers from transmissionist to constructivist. Within constructivist pedagogy the teachers: • Designed activities around teacher/student interests rather than around the curriculum. • Engaged the students in collaborative group projects. • Focused on complex ideas rather than definitions and facts. • Taught students to assess themselves. • Finally, engaged in learning in front of students rather than presenting themselves as experts.

C. Systemic Approach Gap

Background

Systemic

Levels