Assessing Refugee-Background Adult Second Language Learners with Emerging Literacy: How a Social Semiotic Analysis Reveals Hidden Assumptions of Test Design

Abstract

This study is a critical analysis of a low-stakes in-house English as a Second Language (ESL) and English literacy test from a local program in a large city in the southwestern United States. From a critical multimodal social semiotic perspective (Kress G. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge, 2010; Kress G, van Leeuwen T. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge, 2006; Pennycook, Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Routledge, 2001) and through the lens of systemic functional linguistics, the study investigated the test genre elements used, as well as the semiotic resources (multimodal components, multimodal composition) used, to show how test tasks are portrayed to test-takers via these semiotic resources. This chapter explores ideologies of language and literacy, and assumptions made in the multimodal composition and visual design of language and literacy tests for refugee-background adult second language learners with emerging literacy. The results showed assumptions of visual and multimodal literacy, test genre knowledge, and referential background and content schemata, as well as an inherent ideology that visual images, cues, and design are universal. The study has implications for assessment and materials design for this population in both educational contexts and beyond, as well as design for broader populations in any context.