Week 8: Multiliteracies, Multimodality, and Digital Literacy for ESOL Learners

My Response

Of the statistics that were brought up in the two videos we watched this week the two that stood out to me were these: 1) Many of the jobs we are preparing students to work for will not exist once they are done with school, and 2) 80% of media consumption on our phone is video. In that sense, it is plainly apparent why a shift to a multimodal approach in pedagogy is needed. Not only will many of the jobs we hope to have our students receive be extinct thanks to technological innovations like ChatGPT, but to have a written-text-only approach to literacy does our students no favors - as most of the texts that students choose to surround themselves with appeal to other methods of learning methodologies including visual and aural. This is an apparent fact with L1 English learners, and it is even more so true with EBs.

 

In regards to the first point, this is why it is vital to encourage EB students with digital means of learning English. As Hafner et al. (2003) demonstrate, while technological tools can be a great means of "gamifying" learning - allowing students to learn fundamental concepts about the English language through games in conjunction with standard pedagogy - they can do so much more. Whether it is allowing students to combine audiovisual items to make texts more approachable for their peers, giving students the chance to "remix" the literature you provide to them in class,  or creating a classroom blog for students to log their own educational journeys, the tools that technology can provide students may allow students to find new career pathways that have not presented themselves yet (p. 813).

 

As for the second point, as it is already apparent that students consume information in a variety of means outside of the written text, it is important that they can be critical readers to ensure they do not mindlessly consume what could very well be fake news - or, at the very least, biased propaganda. Lasisi Ajayi (2011) demonstrated this clearly when recording her observations of students watching the Disney classic Cinderella. While she could have simply presented students with the vocabulary and the movie and have them simply regurgitate the message that was straight from the 1940s, she had students write a profile of themselves and illustrate their thoughts about the message of the movie - allowing them to also describe these pictures for confirmation (pp. 14-18). By having students frame their understanding  of the film through the context of their perspectives, it became apparent that students were questioning the  "submissive representation"  of a woman as seen in the film, as they illustrated through historical figures like Rosa Parks to their own family members many examples of women who worked hard and fought for their dreams (p. 19). This likely would not have happened if a teacher simply sat a student down, perhaps with a viewing guide, to watch the movie straight.

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References:

Ajayi, L. (2011). Video "reading" and multimodality: A study of ESL/literacy pupils' interpretation of Cinderella from their socio-historical perspective. The Urban Review, 1-30.

 

Hafner, C., Chik, A., & Jones, R. (2013). Engaging with digital literacies in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 812-815.

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My Response to Melinda Oakes:

To be honest, I was initially shocked when I saw the statistic that the average person will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38, but when I reflected on my employment history, as of the age of 32, I had 17 jobs. Two of these I had for less than a month, while only one (my current teaching position) I have had for three years. I guess it does demonstrate the fast-paced and impermanent lifestyles we have today. But at the same time, should we seriously be all that shocked? I mean, when I talk to my students casually, it stuns me how atomized they are today than even when I was growing up. Whether they be talking about dooms scrolling on TikTok until late in the evening to expressing how their social lives are by talking about their experiences playing Call of Duty or Fortnite, students these days tend to be more independent than they used to be - for good or ill. This almost makes me wonder if e-portfolios are the better means of assessment. The generation we teach today is definitely more technologically-proficient, so it would likely not be as much of a headache for students to set up. Moreover, it might allow for a more dynamic, self-paced approach that demonstrates students' acquisition of English from the byproducts they put out rather than simply what score they earn on a standardized test. There's definitely a lot to think about here.

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My Response to Michelle Johansen:

I agree with your side note about how flawed many of these statistics are. At the very least, they might be out of date, and at the worst they're flat-out misleading. Take your point from Forbes. Anyone who has any knowledge concerning the history of the Philippines would tell you that English is one of their official languages. Moreover, as I gathered from one of the students I interviewed for the research project, it is common in many Filipino elementary and middle schools - even those that aren't considered very urban (my interviewee stated she believed her hometown was "urban" because she was about an hour away from a mall, which in all fairness is closer than a 3-hour flight!) - to learn English while they are in school. To be fair, I won't let her speak for everybody, but even my students who are beginning English learners here have a very good handle of conversational English and some skill in academic English. I say this not only because I teach a lot of Filipino immigrants here, but also because I wonder if the statistic of "China will soon become the #1 English-speaking country in the world" is provided more as shock value than as established fact.