Innovation in Language Learning

This paper explores the ways multimodal pedagogies (Stein, 2008) played out in an English second language (L2) classroom to influence how adolescent L2 writers (N=48) constructed ideational meanings (Halliday, 1985) using language and visual imagery, how these meanings changed across multiple modes of representation (Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2010), and how the multimodal activities expanded and transformed the writers learning over time. A multimodal pedagogy was designed to support writers to compose multiple texts forms on topics of their own choice (Yi, Shin, & Cimasko, 2020). The writers engaged in photo elicitation activity, composition and multiple revisions of expository texts, taking of pictures, creation and presentation of posters, and guided reflections about their multimodal composing experience. The word-based expository texts, multimodal texts and guided reflections of six focal students were collected and analyzed qualitatively. Drawing on expansive learning theory (Engeström, 1999), the analysis focused on the adolescent ESL learners’ writing as a process of expansion, that is, a process of transition “from actions currently performed by individuals to a new collective activity” (Sannino, Daniels & Gutierrez (2009, p. xi) as well as a process of transcendence, transformation and development (Engeström, Pounti, & Seppanen, 2003). The findings showed a variation and range of meanings in the writers’ texts, demonstrating how the different modes offered different opportunities and constraints for making meaning. They also showed how the L2 writers learning went beyond the production of written texts to include transformations in the writers understanding of multimodal text-making and of the social and cultural issues of interest them, as evidenced in the way the writers reconstructed community problems and the way their ideas about these issues kept expanding. Implications for innovative language learning in second language contexts are discussed.