scholarly journals IMAGE-TEXT RELATION INTERPRETATION: TEACHERS’ VISUAL-VERBAL COMPETENCE IN TEACHING TEXTS

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 208-217
Author(s):  
Yustika Nur Fajriah ◽  
Fuad Abdul Hamied ◽  
Wawan Gunawan

Multimodal literacy instruction is such a new shift of the literacy in which the construction of knowledge is led to be more socially and contextually bounded. Due to the urgency that teachers have to own multimodal competencies, this study aimed to investigate EFL teachers’ competence in interpreting visual-verbal relations to teach multimodal texts. To collect the data, an online test through the Google form platform was distributed. As many as 43 responses were collected from junior and senior high school teachers in one of the cities in Indonesia. A semi-structured interview was also conducted with six purposive participants. The data in this research were then analysed based on Royce’s criteria of image-text relation. The analysis found that the teachers only partially possessed multimodal competencies. It means that that they had used images to help them teach the texts but had insufficient knowledge on how to utilize the images as meaning-making sources. Then, based on the finding, it is suggested that the teachers should improve their competences in interpreting multimodal meanings in texts, so images are used not only for making learning materials interesting but also for making more meanings from the texts.   

Author(s):  
Kathy A. Mills ◽  
Len Unsworth

Multimodal literacy is a term that originates in social semiotics, and refers to the study of language that combines two or more modes of meaning. The related term, multimodality, refers to the constitution of multiple modes in semiosis or meaning making. Modes are defined differently across schools of thought, and the classification of modes is somewhat contested. However, from a social semiotic approach, modes are the socially and culturally shaped resources or semiotic structure for making meaning. Specific examples of modes from a social semiotic perspective include speech, gesture, written language, music, mathematical notation, drawings, photographic images, or moving digital images. Language and literacy practices have always been multimodal, because communication requires attending to diverse kinds of meanings, whether of spoken or written words, visual images, gestures, posture, movement, sound, or silence. Yet, undeniably, the affordances of people-driven digital media and textual production have given rise to an exponential increase in the circulation of multimodal texts in networked digital environments. Multimodal text production has become a central part of everyday life for many people throughout the life course, and across cultures and societies. This has been enabled by the ease of producing and sharing digital images, music, video games, apps, and other digital media via the Internet and mobile technologies. The increasing significance of multimodal literacy for communication has led to a growing body of research and theory to address the differing potentials of modes and their intermodality for making meaning. The study of multimodal literacy learning in schools and society is an emergent field of research, which begins with the important recognition that reading and writing are rarely practiced as discrete skills, but are intimately connected to the use of multimodal texts, often in digital contexts of use. The implications of multimodal literacy for pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment in education is an expanding field of multimodal research. In addition, there is a growing attention to multimodal literacy practices that are practiced in informal social contexts, from early childhood to adolescence and adulthood, such as in homes, recreational sites, communities, and workplaces.


Author(s):  
Anthony Baldry ◽  
Paul J. Thibault

Multimodal corpus linguistics has so far been a theoretical rather than an applicative discipline. This paper sketches out proposals that attempt to bridge between these two perspectives. It does so with particular reference to the development of the conceptual and software tools required to create and concordance multimodal corpora from the applicative standpoint and as such is designed to underpin the study of texts at universities in foreign-language teaching and testing cycles. One branch of this work relates to multimedia language tests which, as illustrated in Section 2, use concordancing techniques to analyze multimodal texts in relation to students’ understanding of oral and written forms of discourse in English. Another branch is the exploration of multimodal tests concerned with the explicit assessment of students’ knowledge of the principles and/or models of textual organization of multimodal texts. The two types of test are not mutually exclusive. A third branch of research thus relates to the development of hybrid tests which, for example, combine a capacity to analyze multimodal texts with an assessment of students’ language skills, such as fluency in speaking and writing in English or which ascertain the multimodal literacy competencies of students and the differing orientations to meaning-making styles that individuals manifest. The paper considers these different applicative perspectives by describing the different categories of concordance achievable with the MCA online concordancer (Section 2) and by defining their relevance to multimodal discourse analysis (Section 3). It also illustrates the use of meaning-oriented multimodal concordances in the creation and implementation of multimodal tests (Sections 4). It concludes by suggesting that the re-interpretation of the nature and functions of concordances is long overdue and that the exploration of new types of concordance is salutary for linguistics and semiotics in general.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Jusslin ◽  
Ulrika Magnusson ◽  
Katarina Rejman ◽  
Ria Heilä-Ylikallio ◽  
Siv Björklund

Despite a growing body of research on multimodal writing, scholars still express a need for formal frameworks for discussing multimodal literacy practices and call for  research on multimodality in education that develops a vocabulary to approach multimodal texts in teaching. This study answers this call by presenting an analysis that adds to the field of  multimodal writing research, and thus furthers the knowledge of different semiotic potentials of modes in student-produced texts. Drawing on a social semiotic approach to multimodality, a total of 299 texts, written by fifth-grade students from three schools in Sweden and Finland, are analyzed. The aim is to explore semiotic modes used in the student-produced written texts. The guiding research questions are: (1) What modes are used in the texts, and (2) what meanings are realized through the different modes in the texts. Results showed that six different modes were used to realize meanings in five categories: create representative meaning; visualize phenomena and assignments; foreground important areas; design the text; and decorate the paper. These categories offer a vocabulary that can describe semiotic potentials of the modes and how they realize different meanings in multimodal texts. Such a vocabulary can aid teachers in cultivating, supporting, and assessing students’ multimodal writings that contain multiple modes. From these results, we suggest that acknowledging the diversity of the modes and their meanings in student texts can help raise the awareness of how students also make meaning in modes beyond writing and image.


Author(s):  
Christi U. Edge

This chapter describes an investigation into exploring meaning making through multimodal literacy practices and technology integration for teacher education within the context of an online, secondary reading course for K-12 teachers. Through the use of a collaborative conference protocol, discourse with cross-disciplinary critical friends, and visual thinking data analysis strategies, a teacher educator examined existing multimodal literacy practices and then studied course redesign and technology integration. Results include recognizing opportunities for diverse learners to access and use prior knowledge in the construction of new knowledge, reframing the course delivery platform as a multimodal “text,” increasing opportunity for learners to construct and communicate complex understandings through multimodal texts and technology-infused assessments, and learners' curriculum making through transmediation mediated by technology.


Author(s):  
Christi U. Edge ◽  
Abby Cameron-Standerford ◽  
Bethney Bergh

As a group of three teacher educators representing reading, special education, and educational leadership, the authors conducted a self-study of their online teaching practices with the guiding question of “How can we use multimodal literacies to re-see our practices and to empower others to construct and to communicate meaning?” The purpose was to explore the pedagogic potentials of multimodal literacy by acting upon recent findings from their longitudinal, collaborative self-study into how they use and learn through visual literacy. They sought to extend their line of inquiry and to more inclusively empower learners to negotiate and to make meaning through multimodal literacy practices. Findings document how using protocols to critically “read,” discuss, and collaboratively make meaning from their online teaching practices illuminated the relationship of multimodal texts, visuals and literacy practices in fostering access, opportunity, and ownership for learners in online courses.


Author(s):  
Siusana Kweldju

In the digital age, the notion of text has broadened to include digitally constructed multimodal texts. Meaning-making in everyday life is not only based on verbal language as the only mode, but also visual images. Students need more learning assignments and activities to develop their multimodal communication skills. To meet this need, a project utilizing linguistic landscape as a learning context is created for its rich multimodal representations. Task-based approach is adopted to facilitate a triple-track solution: improving students’ general English and display English proficiency, raising the students’ multimodal literacy, and developing their collaborative skill. The reason to employ task-based approach is because it strengthens the learners’ opportunity to do real-world-relevant projects to promote both their language acquisition and their collaborative skills. The project is completed when learners in teams give their presentations as their learning out comes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 151 ◽  
pp. 33-56
Author(s):  
Ali Ahmad Al-Barakat ◽  
Ruba Fahmi Bataineh ◽  
Samih Mahmoud Al-Karasneh ◽  
Rula Fahmi Bataineh

This study investigates the appropriateness of the Action Pack Textbook Series (APTS) currently taught in the first four primary stage classes in Jordanian public schools. An evaluation checklist, compiled from the literature, and a semi-structured interview were used to evaluate the content, layout, assessment tasks, teacher's book and the availability of supplementary materials. The findings support the following conclusions: Poor ratings were minimal; APTS is adaptable to the needs of both teachers and pupils and provides a broad range of resources that can be selectively integrated into the curriculum; APTS contains modes of instruction that are developmentally appropriate for a wide range of learners; APTS instructional materials are interesting, engaging and effective for the target learners; the format of the teacher's book is easy to follow, the directions for implementing activities are clear, and the teacher's book itself is flexible and allows teachers to choose from a variety of activities to use with their pupils; for the most part, non-text materials are used appropriately to promote learning; and, overall, the materials for the pupils are well written, age-appropriate and compelling in content.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosukhon Swatevacharkul

Reflection is essential for the teaching practice course since it enhances life-long professional teaching development of the teachers. Capacity to reflect needs to be developed. The objectives of this study were 1) to investigate the levels of learning reflection of pre-service EFL teachers at the end of the teaching practice course, and 2) to explore how reflection contributes to changes of the reflection levels.  This study took the form of an embedded experimental mixed methods research design using a close and open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interview to collect data from 13 international students at an MA ELT program.  Data analysis was performed by a t-test and thematic content analysis.  The findings revealed that 1) on average, the level of Habitual Action, Understanding, and Critical Reflection at the beginning and the end of the course was not significantly different. However, the level of Reflection was significantly different at the end of the course.  Three themes: 1) Revision of past experiences for teaching improvement; 2) Thinking and writing skills development, and 3) Change of beliefs and teaching techniques were generated causing such reflection capacity changes.  Recommendations were provided for further research in this area.


Author(s):  
Muhamad Taufik Hidayat

Teacher’s personal trait is critical because it may ominously affect students’ motivation in learning. However, some teachers remain unaware of its significance. It was evident in the students’ statements stating that they often had to learn with moody teachers who, as a result, ruined their learning motivation. The present study aims to explore the students’ perspectives on the EFL teacher’s personalities that influence the students’ motivation. To achieve the objective, the study utilized case study design in which the data were collected through semi-structured interview conducted to six senior high school students. The data were then analyzed by following Miles and Huberman’s (1994) framework. The results showed that all respondents shared agreement on the teacher’s personalities that they prefered. They felt happy and motivated when they learned with humble, friendly, kind, caring, patient, and humorous teachers. The results of this study may help the EFL teachers consider their personality as one of the vital aspects that could affect the students’ learning motivation. EFL teachers should pay more attention to their attitudes towards the students. In addition, the results suggest that policy makers should formulate rules that encourage teachers to not only focus on their hard skills but also their soft skills such as good personalities.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 329
Author(s):  
Fahmeeda Gulnaz ◽  
Amani Dakheel Allah Althomali ◽  
Daliyah Hesham Alzeer

The traditional face-to-face teaching, despite being constantly criticized by the methodologists and ever-emerging modern approaches, has never lost its scope in the (EFL) English as a Foreign Language context. Researchers and pedagogues, in order to get the both ends meet, have converged traditional face-to-face instructions and online activities into the concept of blended learning. By establishing on previous works and contexts, the present study aims at investigating Taif University’s EFL teachers and learners’ positive and negative perceptions and experiences towards the effectiveness of online (CLMS) Cambridge Learning Management System and on-site learning environments. The work utilized triangulation in the use of research methods, i.e., both qualitative and quantitative methods overlap each other: (i) structured interview of experienced EFL (4 male and 4 female) teachers of Taif University, with maximum open ended questions, exhibit qualitative dimensions of the study; (ii) an opinionnaire developed with closed ended questions by employing Likert’s five point scale to collect the data from 100 male and 100 female EFL learners of Taif University, represents quantitative perspective of the work. The opinionnaire includes 22 items and has been developed to measure the four subscales; learners’ beliefs and attitudes, promising strands that help develop learners’ confidence and language coupled with the perils that impede their creativity and motivation to learn. The findings of the study indicate that the level of strengths of blended learning is higher than its limitations. Learners found themselves satisfied being more exposed to the target language through vivid images, videos, audios, reading texts, chatting and discussion forums and acknowledged that (BLE) blended learning environment enhanced their language proficiency.


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