Introduction

The International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education (IJLCLE) was born out of the peer-reviewed Working Papers in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education (WPLCLE) published virtually in five volumes from 2012 to 2017. IJLCLE is an open-source, peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to publishing research in the field of literacy, culture, and language education from multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary perspectives. Its mission is to promote the academic exchange of ideas and dissemination of research among scholars and researchers from diverse fields of study worldwide. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts describing scholarly research on a wide range of topics related to language, literacy, and culture in education. Theoretical and conceptual study, empirical and applied research using qualitative and/or quantitative methodologies, critical papers, special issues, and book reviews are all invited. Contributions from a host of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, sociology of language, psycholinguistics, educational linguistics, applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, raciolinguistics, literacy studies, cultural studies, language and gender studies, language and political economy, media and technology, language education, teacher education, educational policy, semiotics, pragmatics, language policy and planning, language revitalization, and linguistic landscapes are very welcome. The intended audience of IJLCLE are researchers, scholars, educators, and graduate students from around the world.

University Students’ Demotivation in Learning Second Languages

Prior studies report a tendency of university students in Australia to quit their beginner level second language (L2) courses at an early stage (Martín et al., 2016; Nettelbeck et al., 2007). Demotivational patterns are meta-analyzed to understand what hampers the interest in learning French, German, Italian and Spanish of continuing students, discontinuing students, and quitters over one year of studies at Australian universities. Such a distinction across categories of students is offered in line with Martín et al.’s (2016) research. Demotivators are structured on three levels of analysis drawing on Gruba et al.’s (2016) and The Douglas Fir Group’s (2016) frameworks, which encapsulate three levels of analysis, specifically micro, meso and macro. Findings suggest that beginner L2 students in Australia are demotivated by all three levels of analysis in very dynamic and interchangeable ways. Students were found to concurrently experience very different degrees of demotivation over time.

Multimodality in Early Childhood Education

The purpose of this paper is to explore the uses of multimodality within early childhood education classrooms for the purposes of literacy education. Wohlwend (2008) urges educators to keep age-appropriate practices in place, even amid a shift in educational requirements and expectations. In this paper, the use of age-appropriate, multimodal practices for young learners is explored. Though there is not necessarily research specific to multimodality in early childhood, the literature shows that multimodality is present in forms of play; the use of toys, devices, and technology; drama; and social interactions. Through these modality-rich avenues, literacy development can still be achieved through engaging structures for children. Multimodality creates opportunities to position the student as the expert in their own learning and create collaborative learning environments. Potential issues with these uses of multimodality include conflicts around devices in the classroom and negative social interactions. Additional research is needed to connect the fields of multimodality and early childhood education.

An Examination of Translingual Practices on a Mobile Application

This article reports Korean speakers’ experiences with naturally occurring translingual transliterations in a noneducational online contact zone to support improvement of English pronunciation. Use of the Korean and English alphabets in pronunciation transliterations and application users’ meaning-making are analyzed using Canagarajah’s (2013) macrotranslingual strategies for negotiation. Findings show that the nonstandard transliterations could easily deliver pronunciations to a broad audience and stimulate the participation of users, who draw on diverse resources to strategically negotiate their footings to make meaning, often referring to their linguistic knowledge or experiences in certain countries. Patterns around transliteration and negotiation suggest two major implications for classroom pronunciation instruction: using students’ existing resources to address crucial features of intelligibility such as vowel quality and suprasegmental features in transliterations, in addition to segmentals, and eliciting students’ active involvement in meaning construction. Furthermore, English teachers might challenge their students’ acceptance of prevalent monolingual standards in pronunciation and establish their translingual sensitivity to cultural/linguistic diversity.

The Sacredness of Remembering and Re-storying

This article discusses findings from a qualitative research study which focused on how women from diverse backgrounds used storying as a space to make sense of life experiences that had highly impacted their lives. This article explores how women’s stories mediate their experiences of being temporarily silenced, how they resisted others’ silencing over their own viewpoints, and how their storying mediates different ways of “talking back” through story-writing in letters and journals and story-living through an intentional practice of wearing an artifact of trauma. Multiple interviews were used as the primary data sources, and through these the participants’ stories emerged. Intersections of gender, race, religion, and socioeconomic status in the participants’ stories were analyzed, and the categories of silencing, resistance/talking back, and resilience developed. Findings included the participants’ abilities to navigate issues related to others’ forced perspectives on their bodies as a social and political space (Pitts, 2003; Woods, 2012).

Students Writing across Cultures: Teaching Awareness of Audience in a Co-curricular Service Learning Project

We examine a model for outofschool literacy instruction using language and cultural available designs for teaching awareness of audience across cultures. The literacy model described here engages undergraduate and secondary students in a cross-cultural storytelling exchange and calls for anticipating the needs of young readers who do not share linguistic or cultural backgrounds. We describe the process of helping the writers to understand their Rwandan audience and highlight some of the linguistic and cultural issues that arose in the early drafts and persisted throughout the editing process despite direct feedback. We describe the workshops in which we discussed available linguistic and cultural designs and track some of the responses of the writers. And finally, we examine a story from the third volume for evidence that the writers had addressed the needs of the Rwandan readers in their stories.

One Story, Many Perspectives: Reading and Writing Graphic Novels in the Elementary Social Studies Classroom

Though elementary students often read picture books in school, the growth of critical literacy has inspired teachers to select texts that engage students with literacy and social studies in more meaningful ways. Although many of these texts are traditional picture books, alternative formats like the graphic novel are also being used to invite student questioning and share multiple perspectives. This study examines the ways elementary students understand and retell a complex social studies story using multiple textual formats. Thirdgrade students were exposed to a picture book and graphic novel version of the true story of Alia Muhammad Baker, a courageous Iraqi librarian. After reflecting on the texts, students renarrated the story; many chose to write graphic novels. Students expressed high levels of interest in graphic novels, exhibited new perspectives on the Iraq War and active citizenship, and utilized key features of graphic novels to tell complex and multilayered social stories.

Book Review: Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People, edited by Guy Merchant et al, London: Routledge, 2014

Review of Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People, edited by Guy Merchant et al, London: Routledge, 2014.