Designing a modern language course for culturally and linguistically diverse students

Kiyu Itoi

doi:10.18192/olbij.v11i1.6174

Abstract

Cultivating learners’ multimodal communication skills and their intercultural awareness is necessary for effective collaboration. With this aim, a translanguaging dual language (TDL) course was developed at a Japanese multilingual university drawing on the pedagogy of multiliteracies (PoM) and translanguaging. The research questions this study addressed were: (1) What kinds of teaching and learning activities can be provided to allow students to negotiate and co-create knowledge? (2) How do students in a tertiary TDL course engage with the PoM? In the course, role-play videos were made by students to demonstrate approaches to communication with their classmates from various backgrounds. A multimodal textual analysis of the video data was conducted. The findings suggest that the course fostered students’ capability of engaging and negotiating locally situated communication strategies using various semiotic resources including translanguaging. This article also suggests pedagogical implications for student-oriented classrooms that allow space for students’ negotiation and co-construction of knowledge.

Highlights

IntroductionThe mobility of people and information across borders has increased in today’s globalized world
The pedagogy of multiliteracies (PoM) was mainly developed in Anglo-speaking countries such as the United States and Australia, it can be useful in non-English-speaking countries such as Japan
Another group used various semiotic resources that were edited into the video to communicate their ideas clearly

Summary

Introduction

The mobility of people and information across borders has increased in today’s globalized world. Since most of the students will use English as a lingua franca, the ability to negotiate and make meaning using various available designs (NLG, 1996) as well as critical intercultural awareness, rather than the mastery of one form of English, are important aspects to be considered in EFL classrooms. Another important aspect of the PoM is the concept of designing. 75); through designing, meaning is created by designers, who are the people involved in the communication. With new available designs, meanings are not reproduced but are transformed, and new meanings

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Discussion

Conclusion