A Design-Oriented Analysis of Multimodality in English as a Foreign Language

Ingrid Karoline Jakobsen,Elise Seip Tønnessen

doi:10.16993/dfl.89

Abstract

This empirical article investigates multimodality in English as a foreign language, both as seen in the use of multimodal texts as artefacts and pedagogical texts for learning, and through an analysis of the multimodal learning designs. We present observations from a year 10 classroom in Norway that worked with the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Alexie, 2007). We explore a four-week teaching sequence, asking how different modes were involved when the educator designed literacy events around the novel, and how multimodality is present in the students’ meaning making. Our aim is to make explicit and discuss some of the silent literacy practices in English teaching at lower secondary level in Norwegian schools.

Highlights

Introduction and BackgroundThis article takes its starting point in the joint understanding, of multimodal social semiotics and design-oriented didactics, that learning can be understood as a social, meaning-making process
English as a school subject has a tradition of using visual modes in both first language teaching (Jewitt, 2014a) and second language teaching (Jakobsen, 2015; Skjelbred et al, 2017)
English taught as a foreign language (EFL) or second language (L2/ESL) in Norway

Summary

Introduction

This article takes its starting point in the joint understanding, of multimodal social semiotics and design-oriented didactics, that learning can be understood as a social, meaning-making process. This entails modes other than written and spoken language playing important roles in students’ learning in school, even in language learning. The ‘multimodal turn’, in which attention is focused on the interplay between modes, opens up new ways of understanding the designs of classroom activity (Kress, 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006; Mills, 2010) These phenomena are not new, but our ways of thinking about them are changing or ‘turning’ Multimodality is inherent in the English subject in Norway, though not an explicit part of the English subject curriculum

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion