Pedagogical Potential of Linguistic Landscape for English Teaching and Learning: An Analysis of Pre-Service Elementary School Teachers’ Activities in a Multimedia English Course

Abstract

With the growing interest in linguistic landscape in sociolinguistic studies, many language educators and researchers have begun to consider how the sociolinguistic concept and analytic methods can be mobilized for language learning and teaching. To explore the pedagogical potential of linguistic landscape, this study examines how pre-service teachers understand the concept and implications of linguistic landscape for English education. For this purpose, 35 South Korean pre-service elementary school teachers taking a multimedia English course attended a session about linguistic landscape and engaged in two activities using multimedia resources and online platforms: a virtual linguistic landscape task and a linguistic landscape fieldwork project. The analysis of the learning outcomes of these two activities revealed that linguistic landscapes helped pre-service teachers increase their language awareness of public language use. However, their engagement with language awareness was affected by the spaces they chose to collect public signs. In their reflections on the activities, the pre-service teachers indicated that linguistic landscapes could be valuable resources for authentic English and cultural learning. They also stated that the levels of linguistic difficulty and cultural contents of public signage should be controlled. This article concludes by discussing how linguistic landscape can contribute to improving English teachers’ critical language awareness.