Memeing to learning: Exploring meaning-making in a language-learning chat group

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-90
Author(s):  
Yiting Han
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Meaning Making

Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072199600
Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Canizales
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
The United States ◽  
English Language Learning ◽  
Youth Workers ◽  
K 12

Immigration scholars agree that educational attainment is essential for the success of immigrant youth in U.S. society and functions as a key indicator of how youth will fare in their transition into adulthood. Research warns of downward or stagnant mobility for people with lower levels of educational attainment. Yet much existing research takes for granted that immigrant youth have access to a normative parent-led household, K–12 schools, and community resources. Drawing on four years of ethnographic observations and interviews with undocumented Latinx young adults (ages 18 to 31) who arrived in Los Angeles, California, as unaccompanied youth, I examine the educational meaning making and language learning of Latinx individuals coming of age as workers without parents and legal status. Findings show that Latinx immigrant youth growing up outside of Western-normative parent-led households and K–12 schools and who remain tied to left-behind families across transnational geographies tend to equate education with English language learning. Education—as English language learning—is essential to sobrevivencia, or survival, during their transition to young adulthood as workers and transnational community participants.

scholarly journals Nexus analysis in the study of the changing field of language learning, language pedagogy and language teacher education

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
Leena Kuure ◽  
Maritta Riekki ◽  
Riikka Tumelius
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Language Teacher Education ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Language Pedagogy ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Nexus Analysis

Nexus analysis is becoming increasingly employed in a variety of research fields. It is seen to be particularly suited to exploring complex and changing phenomena. It entails a mediated discourse perspective to social action and interaction. In discourse studies, this involves switching the perspective from language to social semiotic meaning making in its full spectrum not only here and now but at the same time reaching across more distant spatial and temporal orientations. As the tradition of nexus analysis is still young there are no established interpretations of how to conduct research with an interest in such complexities in flux. This paper presents a review of studies in which nexus analysis or mediated discourse analysis has been applied in research related to language pedagogy and language teacher education. The review shows how research in the field is in emergence and the interpretations concerning the theoretical-methodological underpinnings vary to some extent.

scholarly journals Young L2-learners' meaning-making in engaging in computer-assisted language learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Anna Hell ◽  
Anna-Lena Godhe ◽  
Eva Wennås Brante
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Young Students

<p>This study explores how newly arrived young students created meaning, communicated, and expressed themselves using digital technology in the subject of Swedish as a second language (SSL).  The qualitative case study presented in this article focuses on how the orchestration of teaching contributed to opportunities for digital meaning-making in the SSL subject in four classrooms at three schools in a city in Sweden. The notion of language as being fluid, which involves a critical approach to languages as separable entities, considers linguistic and embodied meaning-making, including digital technology, in social processes. This approach recognizes the roles of technology and digital meaning-making in young students’ second language acquisition. Moreover, technological innovations facilitate immediate and accessible communication.  In today’s language studies, ethnicity only is not considered an adequate focus of analysis. Furthermore, the meaning-making practices of newly arrived primary school-aged students remain under-investigated. In the present study, data collected in classroom observations and teacher interviews revealed three themes regarding the students’ utilization of digital technology to develop their multilingual skills. One insight was that the newly arrived students used digital technology strategically when they engaged in meaning-making activities with peers and teachers. When the students took the initiative in computer-assisted language learning, they displayed agency in meaning-making by being their own architects. The findings of this research provided insights into how the orchestration of teaching in Swedish as a second language to newly arrived students affects their opportunities to use multilingualism in meaning-making while employing digital technology.</p>

Analyzing the talking book Imagine a world: A multimodal approach to English language learning in a multilingual context

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 747-774
Author(s):  
Heather Lotherington ◽  
Sabine Tan ◽  
Kay L. O’Halloran ◽  
Peter Wignell ◽  
Andrew Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Linguistically Diverse Students ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
Professional Interest ◽  
Semiotic Resources

Abstract In recent years there has been increased academic and professional interest and awareness in approaches to English language teaching (ELT) that take a plurilingual approach. This is often combined with a multimodal stance. The outcome of this combination is an approach to English language teaching that integrates multiple languages and multiple semiotic resources. This paper examines how a plurilingual approach to ELT can be viewed through a multimodal lens by analyzing the construction of a plurilingual talking book created as a student project in an elementary public school. The analysis uses multimodal analysis software to map the interaction of languages and images, in order to determine how these function as meaning-making resources in a multimodal, multiple-language text created by linguistically diverse students with high ELT needs. The findings indicate how combinations of different semiotic resources work together to create meaning, delineates the role of English in meaning-making, and illustrates the children’s multilingual interactions in the creation of their collaboratively composed multimodal talking book.

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.

Analisis Naratif Pada Proses Pembelajaran Bahasa Jepang di Perguruan Tinggi dan Pengaruhnya Terhadap Pilihan Masa Depan Pembelajar Setelah Lulus

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatmawati Djafri
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
L2 Motivational Self System ◽  
Inquiry Approach ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Motivational Changes

This study examines the significant factors constituted in the meaning-making process of Japanese learning in higher educational context. It employs narrative inquiry approach to investigate the process of motivational change among Japanese learners and how it has impacted on their future choices after graduating from university. Based on the analysis using theoretical frameworks of Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System and Norton's investment in language learning, this study found two types of motivational changes experienced by Japanese learners, namely the initial-confirmation/practical-development type and the initial-anxiety-withdrawal type. The result of this study proposes some key roles of Japanese department as a higher educational institution which plays in fostering global human resources and provides important insights into the development of Japanese language education in Indonesia.   

Digital Storytelling

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-83
Author(s):  
Nurdan Kavaklı ◽  
Eda Başak Hancı-Azizoglu
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Negotiation Of Meaning ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
The World ◽  
21St Century Learning Skills ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Innovative Techniques

Storytelling has been widely used as a strategy to develop language-related skills. Storytelling and learning are interwoven since composing a story is an inseparable component of the meaning-making process. Serving as a link between the act of imagination and perceiving the world, storytelling has been applied to promote effective language learning outcomes. Storytelling offers a language-based approach in literature by means of its activity-based, student-centered, and process-oriented nature, and storytelling supports students' negotiation of meaning by engaging and motivating them within the creative learning process. By this definition, the purpose of this research study is to initiate a scholarly discussion on innovative techniques in digital storytelling to support second language writing instruction along with significant strategies that employ 21st century learning skills.

scholarly journals Gesture, meaning-making, and embodiment: Second language learning in an elementary classroom

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro (Alex) Rosborough
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Communication Task

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mediational role of gesture and body movement/positioning between a teacher and an English language learner in a second-grade classroom. Responding to Thibault’s (2011) call for understanding language through whole-body sense making, aspects of gesture and body positioning were analyzed for their role as mediational tools for meaning making during a math assignment. Analysis of the teacher-student dyad provides insight as to how they moved from simply exchanging answers to using positions and gestures to embody meaning and feelings, thus establishing strategic ways to solve communication problems in the future. A shift to embodying the communication task provided new meanings not previously afforded while sitting at a desk. Combining a Gibsonian (1979) ecological perspective with Vygotskian (1978, 1986) sociocultural theory provides a way to view the role of embodiment in the social practice of second language learning (van Lier, 2004). Findings provide evidence that gesture along with bodily positions and [inter]actions play a central role in this dyadic meaning- making experience. The data demonstrate the interactive nature of the semiotic resources of the activity (i.e., speech, gesture/hands, math graph, whiteboard), with their materialized bodily/speech-voiced acts coinciding with Thibault’s (2004, 2011) explanation of human meaning-making activity as a hybrid phenomenon that includes a cross-coupled relationship between semiotic affordances and physical-material body activity. This perspective embraces Vygotsky’s (1978, 1997a) view of dialectical development including the importance of psychological and materialized-physical tools such as gesture in dealing with language learning processes (McNeill, 2012).

Task dependency effects of collaboration in learners’ corpus consultation: An exploratory case study

ReCALL ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyeyoung Cho
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Collaborative Group ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Nonverbal Behaviors ◽  
Procedural Task ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Task Types ◽  
Verbal And Nonverbal Behaviors

AbstractCollaborative learning has attracted attention as pedagogic mediation to assist learners’ corpus consultation, but some studies have pointed to negative aspects of collaboration. Based on the two sides of collaboration in language learning, this study presents a qualitative investigation of different effects of collaboration depending on task types used in learners’ corpus consultation. This study examined two types of tasks: a conceptual task, which tested students’ competence to draw a generalizable conclusion through a meaning-making process of corpus consultation; and a procedural task, which asked students to complete problem-solving activities strategically through corpus analysis. Two groups of three students were given the same tasks of corpus consultation but asked to complete the tasks either collaboratively or individually. The students’ verbal and nonverbal behaviors during the task completion, pre-and post-interviews, and the instructor’s observation notes were the main sources of data for analysis. The results of this study showed that collaboration has significantly different effects depending on the task types of corpus consultation. The collaborative group (CG) outperformed the individual group (IG) in the conceptual corpus consultation task, but the procedural task was more efficiently completed by the IG than the CG. The underperformance of the CG in the procedural task seemed to be partly attributable to the role of established intersubjectivity and the power inequality in the CG. Despite some limitations, the findings of this study reveal task-dependent effects of collaboration in corpus consultation and suggest practical implications for more effective and pedagogically beneficial use of learners’ corpus consultation in second language (L2) instruction.

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