scholarly journals Understanding multilingual young adults and adolescents' digital literacies in the wilds: Implications for language and literacy classrooms

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiting Han
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Emerging Themes ◽  
Technological Affordances

Changes in digital landscapes have complex effects on the meaning-making that they mediate (Thorne et al., 2015). There is a growing interest in examining the daily digital literacy practices of today’s multilingual young adults and adolescents, who are going to become the generation of future global communicators (Kim, 2016). Addressing current scholarship on multilingual digital literacy, this article examines research on digital literacy practices of multilingual young adults and adolescents beyond the classroom. Drawing upon multimodality and translanguaging perspectives that recognize literacy practices as ideological constructions produced within social contexts and across semiotic resources, the article identifies five emerging themes across the research. These themes are: recognizing cultural and linguistic diversity, exploring and constructing multifaceted identities online, leveraging technological affordances for communicating, gaining social support in virtual communities, and developing global citizenship through online intercultural exchanges. This article concludes with implications to support critical multilingualism and multimodality in language and literacy classrooms. 

Multimodal Literacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy A. Mills ◽  
Len Unsworth
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Texts ◽  
Making Meaning

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.

Languages and Literacies in Translocation

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 364-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Skerrett
Keyword(s):  
Adolescent Girl ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
The World ◽  
Multiple Languages

Transnational youth represent an increasing demographic in societies around the world. This circumstance has amplified the need to understand how youths’ language and literacy repertoires are shaped by transnational life. In response, this article presents a case study of a Mexican adolescent girl who immigrated to the United States and continued to participate in life in Mexico. It examines shifts in her multiple language and literacy practices that she attributed to transnational life and the knowledge she acquired from transnational engagements with languages and literacies. Data include interviews of the young woman, observations of her in a variety of social contexts, and literacy artifacts that she produced. Research on transnational youths’ language and literacy practices and theories of multiliteracies and border crossing facilitate analysis. Findings include that language and multiliteracy practices shift in interconnected ways in response to transnational life and engagements with multiple languages and literacies foster transnational understandings. Accordingly, attending to transnational youths’ multilingual as well as multiliterate practices can deepen understandings of how people recruit multiple languages, literacies, and lifeworlds for meaning making. Implications of this work are offered concerning the features of a transnational curriculum that can both draw from and build up the language and literacy reservoirs of transnational youth.

Visual accounts of Finnish and Greek teenagers’ perceptions of their multilingual language and literacy practices

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 333-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Pitkänen-Huhta ◽  
Anastasia Rothoni
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
First Language ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Personal Meanings ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Common

AbstractThis paper uses visual methods to explore how teenagers in two different European countries (Finland and Greece) personally relate to their first language and to English, which is widely used in the everyday lives of young people in both countries. Our data comprise sets of self-made visualizations in which 14- to 16-year-old teenagers depict their personal relationship to their first language (Finnish/Greek) and to English. Theoretically and methodologically, we subscribe to socio-culturally oriented research on (foreign language) literacy and language learning and recent studies on multilingualism. Overall, by offering a detailed account of the variety of representation forms and meaning-making symbols employed by our participants in their visual products, our analysis in this paper highlights the common but also diverse perceptions, values and attitudes that young people from two different European contexts bring to their practices and their encounters with English and other languages in their lives. By revealing the personal meanings and values attached by teenagers to English, our analysis also provides indirect insights into the multiple ways English is locally encountered, appropriated and drawn upon by young people in two different countries to serve their own purposes.

scholarly journals Καλλιέργεια πρακτικών ψηφιακού γραμματισμού: δημιουργική πρόκληση για το νέο σχολείο

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Athanasios Mihalis
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Teachers Attitudes

<p> </p><p><span> </span>This paper concerns digital literacy as a main dimension of social literacy in general, and especially as an important aspect of multimodal literacy. The main purpos-es of the paper (on a theoretical level) are the following: a) the definition of the nature and the main aspects and principles of digital literacy, which is regarded as not explicitly and sufficiently defined in an era of information and advanced technology; b) the presentation and analysis of students’ cognitive schemata (formal and content), which are a prerequisite for the cultivation of digital literacy practices, the social and linguistic aspects of digital literacy and the cultural dimension of this kind of literacy; c) the inves-tigation of ways to connect digital literacy and multimodality; d) the description of se-miotic resources and semiotic modes which are the main means for meaning making and meaning making transformation and redesigning, considered within the frame of social semiotic theory; e) finally, the discussion of some dimensions of critical digital literacy in </p><p>educational systems. Additionally, the main aims of the present paper, as a contribution to scientific research in the literacy field, are: a) to investigate the ways digital literacy practices are cultivated in Greek primary and secondary education through content analysis of the Greek language curricula and course books in secondary education and through the critical analysis of educational discourse; b) to present Greek language teachers’ attitudes towards the term and the aspects of multimodality and its location in the Greek educational system (the data about teachers’ attitudes are collected through interviews). The results of the research show that, in Greek education, digital literacy practices are considered to be an intentional process and a system of knowledge and skills (according the autonomous model of literacy) without being viewed in their social and ideological aspects within a communicative and cultural community. The considera-tion of semiotic resources and digital tools as isolated from their social context is in con-trast to language as semiotic mode, which is examined and studied in its social and cul-tural context. Also, language teachers are confused as far as the notion and the aspects of multimodality are concerned. Finally an example is provided of analysing a multimodal text positing an argument, so as to highlight the construction of meaning through a vari-ety of semiotic modes.Using this example, the content and practice of Greek language as an educational subject could be rejuvenated.</p>

scholarly journals Transnational Literacies as Social Remittances: The Role of Language Ideologies in Shaping Migrants’ Online Literacies

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-319
Author(s):  
Tony Capstick
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Social Remittances ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Similar Vein ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract It is now twenty years since the term ‘social remittances’ was taken up to capture the notion that migration involves the circulation of ideas, practices, identities, and social capital between destination and origin countries, in addition to the more tangible circulation of money. In a similar vein, a social theory of literacy sees practices not as observable units of behaviour but rather as social processes which connect people. To identify how literacy practices can be seen as social remittances, I identify how Usman, the key respondent in this study, goes about describing his first six months in the UK by tracing the meaning-making trajectories in our interviews together. I then explore the language and literacy choices that his family and friends make on Facebook as they remit ideas, beliefs, and practices in their transnational literacies. I examine how these practices are shaped by beliefs about language. The article seeks to understand the relationship between migrants’ literacy practices before and after their migrations and how these practices remit ideas and beliefs which maintain transnational migration.

scholarly journals Introducing Everyday Digital Literacy Practices into the Classroom: An Analysis of Multi-layered Media, Modes and their Affordances

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adele Creer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Layered Media ◽  
Major Conclusion ◽  
Assessment Tasks

Integrating digital media into classroom practice requires consideration on many levels, how young people access and engage with digital media at the level of media, mode and genre is complex and may redefine how literacy practices in the classroom are perceived. Young people use digital media in their everyday literacy practices and a failure to embrace new technologies in the classroom may lead to a disjuncture between their everyday and college-assessed literacy practices.  Following an analysis of communicative interactions that looked at multi-layered media, modes and their affordances, this paper offers insights from recent research.  It looks carefully at the congruence and incongruences that exists between the two literacy practices with the aim to offer rich insights into meaning making in what are comparatively new, digital literacy practices.  A major conclusion is that some assessment tasks do have congruence with young people’s everyday literacy practices but at times they either do not take account of the students ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al.,1992) to the full which is likely to cause confusion and possible under performance.

scholarly journals ‘Academic literacies’: sustaining a critical space on writing in academia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Lillis
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Academic Literacies ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

In this paper, I briefly track the emergence and foci of academic literacies as a field of inquiry, summarising its contributions to understandings about writing and meaning making in academia. Writing from my specific geohistorical location in the UK, I foreground the importance of early key works that encapsulated concerns about deficit orientations to students’ language and literacy practices (e.g. Ivanič, 1998; Lea and Street,1998). I also underline the transnational dimension to the development of academic literacies which has helped drive forward intellectual debates about the relationship between academic language and literacy practices, and participation in academia. I argue that academic literacies provides an important space for critically exploring what are often taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature and value of academic writing conventions, and the ways these (both assumptions and conventions) impact on opportunities for participation in knowledge making. This critical thinking space continues to serve as an intellectual resource for researchers, teachers and students in contemporary neo-liberal higher education, where regimes of evaluation are super-normative, even in (or because of) a context of super-diversity, that is increased mobility of peoples and semiotic practices. Academic literacies as praxis necessarily involves straddling both normative and transformative orientations (Lillis and Scott, 2007) or what Hall (1992) refers to as the ‘academic’ and ‘intellectual’ dimensions to academia. 

scholarly journals Intersecting Flows of Language and Literacy: A Case Study of One Transnational Youth in the Cloud and in the Classroom

LETRAS ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Dillard-Paltrineri
Keyword(s):  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Virtual Spaces ◽  
Alfabetización Digital ◽  
Estudio De Caso

What youth do online is often dismissed as solely social and superficial a waste of time and certainly not academic. Many transnational youth use sophisticated, multimodal, and multilingual literacy skills to navigate these physical and virtual spaces. Calling on concepts of flows and scapes, as well as sociocultural notions of mediation, this case study investigates the digital literacy practices of transnational youth. A description is provided of see how these practices flow between (and simultaneously mediate further participation in) official and unofficial spaces of learning. Las actividades en línea de los jóvenes se consideran pasatiempos, y no actividades académicas. Muchos jóvenes transnacionales navegan los espacios físicos y virtuales usando destrezas de alfabetización complejas, multimodales y multilingües. Mediante los conceptos de flujos y scapes, mediación y teorías socioculturales, este estudio de caso investiga las prácticas de alfabetización digital de jóvenes transnacionales. Describe las formas en que éstas destrezas fluyen (y, simultáneamente, median más participación) entre espacios de aprendizaje oficiales y no oficiales.

scholarly journals Multiliteracies in Rural Schools:

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trish Morita-Mullaney ◽  
Haiyan Li ◽  
Jennifer Renn
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Highly Qualified Teachers ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
Collective Case Study ◽  
Qualified Teachers ◽  
Family Based

Multiliteracies is a paradigm for language and literacy, in which all languages and literacies are valuable, meaningful, and serve a purpose in meeting the needs of the learner within their social contexts. Multiliteracies are enacted and negotiated through different languages, technologies, and modalities and are represented in homes and communities of English Learners (ELs) or emergent bilinguals (EBs), representing their bi- or multilingual identities. Within rural communities, these family multiliteracies differ from the predominantly English-monolingual contexts found within schools, but have the potential to reshape rural educators’ conceptions of literacies. Redefining literacy holds significance in rural communities where resources, including highly qualified teachers, are often scarce or distant. Employing a collective-case study, our study explores the family-based literacy practices of 20 EB families from two rural Midwestern communities. Findings demonstrate that family’s home literacies are associated with complex multilingual and multimodal practices.  

‘Baba, Take Us to Museum’: An Afghan refugee family’s engagement in language and literacy at the children’s museum

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assadullah Sadiq
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Refugee Families ◽  
Afghan Refugee ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
Children's Museum ◽  
Children's Literacy

Although there is a growing body of literature which focuses on museums’ role in supporting children’s literacy, there is also a need for studies to show ways in which museums can support refugee families’ literacy practices. In light of this gap, this qualitative study explores the role of a children’s museum in the literacy practices of a recent refugee Afghan-American family. Data consisted of interviews with the parents and children, conducted using Skype, over a period of two months. A media capture functionality method was used to receive photos from the family using a smartphone. In addition, the family sent audio-recorded interactions during activities that took place at the children’s museum. The recordings were sent through Whatsapp, a smartphone application that lets users’ text, send images, audio record and make calls for free. The findings demonstrated that the children’s museum played an important role in the Manzoor family’s literacy practices. The exhibits at the museum offered the family a site of multi-modalities, where images, sounds and words together contributed to meaning-making. Moreover, the museum provided the family with important resources, such as books and pamphlets on registering for schools. Lastly, the children’s museum provided a supportive environment for the Manzoor family to learn English and meaningfully engage with print literacy.

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