New research on multimodal texts in teaching and learning of English
The newly published anthology 'Multimodality in English Language Learning' provides research-based knowledge on the use, production, and assessment of multimodal texts in the teaching and — This book will be useful for researchers, teachers, students, and educators interested in language, text, and multimodality says associate professor and co-editor of the book, Sigrid Ørevik.
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The Routledge anthology directs attention to the significance of modes beyond speech and writing in English as an Additional Language (EAL) and thereby provides perspectives and experiences that can be applied more widely and inspire other practices in the global and diverse field of EAL teaching, learning and assessment.
— The chapters focus on the use and affordances of multimodal texts in pedagogy, literature, culture, text production, assessment and curriculum development connected to English as an Additional Language. The book will be of interest to scholars, teachers, students and teacher educators within the intersecting fields of language, text and multimodality explains Sigrid Ørevik, who has both co-edited and written a chapter in the newly released volume.
Sigrid Ørevik is Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and has co-edited the new volume on Multimodality in English Language Learning. She says that the book will be of interest to scholars, teachers, students and teacher educators within the intersecting fields of language, text and multimodality.
Ørevik has co-edited the anthology with Sophia Diamantopolou from University College London. Both researchers belong to the research group Text-based English Language Learning (TELL), which is co-led by researchers in English didactics at the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen. The publishing of the book was partly funded by the department.
Ørevik is an active researcher within genre and multimodality in materials for teaching, learning, and assessment in the school subject of English. Her new chapter Developing an assessment framework for multimodal text production in the EAL classroom: The case of persuasive posters, presents a framework that can be used to assess multimodal genres in language teaching and learning:
— Literature and guidelines on assessment in language subjects rarely recognize the role of other semiotic modes than speech and writing in meaning-making. Addressing the question of assessment of learners’ multimodal texts in language teaching and learning, this chapter presents examples of multimodal argumentative texts created by upper secondary students and proposes a framework for assessment of this genre, based on elements from critical multimodal literacy and Systemic-Functional Linguistics, says Ørevik.
Multimodal texts invite learners to make more complex choices
Professor of English didactics at the Department of Foreign Languages, Aud Solbjørg Skulstad, has contributed with the chapter Theoretical perspectives on choice in multimodal text production and consequences for EAL task design to the newly published volume.
An important starting point for Skulstad’s chapter is that text production is primarily a choice-making process. The type of choices and number of options have proliferated due to the use of new technologies, Web 2.0, and the emergence of new and hybrid genres, explains Skulstad.
Professor Aud Solbjørg Skulstad has written a chapter in the new anthology on choices in multimodal text production and the consequences for task design.
— In addition to examining choice from a theoretical perspective, the chapter reaches out to examine textbook tasks for the teaching of English, attending to their wording and the choices they make available to students. The chapter argues that in order to design tasks that will effectively prompt students’ multimodal text production, we need to understand first how the wording of a task entails both constraints and opportunities for practising the type of choice-making that multimodal text production involves, says Skulstad.
The anthology also contains chapters by two other Norwegian TELL-researchers. Associate Professor Anja Bakken from Nord University has written the chapter Introducing critical literacy and multimodal perspectives into film pedagogies for the EAL classroom.
Assistant Professor at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hege Emma Rimmereide, has written the chapter Graphic novels in the EAL classroom: a pedagogical approach based on multimodal and intercultural understandings.
