Innovation in Language Learning

Increasingly, scholars have explored how new composing tools that enable multimodal modes of expression allow learners to enhance authorial voice and facilitate identity reconstruction (e.g. Nelson, 2008; Hafner, 2015). The study on which this presentation reports differs from these studies in that it examines how multimodal approaches enable students’ critical literacy. Specifically, it addresses the question: In what ways do English-language learners reflect on the politics of English through multimodal practices? This study draws from the social semiotic perspective in its understanding of multimodality, which emphasizes the notion of design, i.e. “how people make use of the resources that are available at a given moment in a specific communicational environment to realize their interests as makers of a message/text” (Kress & Jewitt, 2003, p. 17).

The study is a qualitative teacher inquiry conducted in a freshman general English course in a university in Taiwan. Course materials included print and multimedia texts based on which the class discussed issues concerning race, class, and gender. Participants were the 28 students enrolled in the course, and data include the students’ individually-produced multimodal texts in which they considered how English-learning relates to the wider culture. Analysis involved breaking down the text into individual frames and also subdividing the frames into their visual elements to understand the students’ thought process pertaining to particular content.

The presentation will examine in detail one students’ multimodal text, which she entitled “English and the Internet.” Using mostly the visual mode and relying very sparsely on the linguistic mode, she showed how the internet transmits the worldviews of English-speakers, and provided examples of how a simple Google search immerses one in the race, class, and gender ideologies of the English-speaking world. Particular frames of the students’ multimodal text will be examined and implications for multimodal pedagogies will also be discussed.