Multiliteracies & Multimodality for Multilingual Learners ODU ENGL 894: Digital literacy

Lotherington & Jenson (2011)

Teaching multimodal and digital literacy in L2 settings: New Literacies, new Basics, new Pedagogies.

The purpose of Lotherington and Jenson's (2011) article is to give an overview of multimodal literacies, using Cope and Kalantis (2009) to define these as utilizing diverse media to represent spatial, visual, audio, gestural, and tactile dimensions of communication, as well as the New London Group (1996) who add linguistic and multimodal interplay to their list of design elements. They then go on to give specific examples reviewing the implementation of innovative pedagogical approaches to multimodal literacies for L2 (second language) learners. Lotherington and Jenson (2011) start out by emphasizing that multimodal communication is not new, and it is not inherently digital, though that is becoming the norm more and more. Digital technologies do enhance multimodal possibilities. Lotherington and Jenson (2011) argue that students’ access to technologies “directly insert the individual into a digitally mediated multimodal world, creating new schema for participation and meaning making” (p. 227) and that because of this, L2 instruction must reexamine ways to incorporate digital technologies into literacy instruction. Lotherington and Jenson (2011) use Jenkins’s (2006) concept of ‘convergence culture’ that creators and consumers have converged, and assert that L2 pedagogy must acknowledge this and adapt in order to help train students to be collaborators in the creation of content. They also emphasize postmodern influences on the concept of knowledge, stating that technologies have contributed to a new understanding of what it means to know. They support their argument through scholarship by the New London Group (1996), Gee (2009), Cope and Kalantis (2009) and Kress (2003, 2010) among others.

James, K. S., Scida, E. E., & Firdyiwek, Y. (2019).

ePortfolios in a world language learning curriculum.

James et al. (2019) outline a curricular redesign they implemented through a 3-year grant-funded project to implement ePortfolio in foreign language courses at the university level. The purpose was to explore if ePortfolios enhanced language learning and students’ awareness of their language learning. They had four programmatic goals: enhancing multiple literacies through multimodal communication, promoting holistic assessment by incorporating multiple modes of production and interpretation, supporting reflection and awareness of learning strategies, and fostering learner autonomy. They grounded this in the second language pedagogy notion of ‘communicative competence’ and the idea of language learning in authentic contexts. Communicative competence is the ability to "communicate effectively and interact with cultural competence to participate in multilingual communities at home and arond the world" (National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015). The researchers hoped to help students make their own discoveries and connect their developing linguistic skills with other literacies, such as cultural literacy and digital literacy. James et al. (2019) state part of their reason for implementing ePortfolios in particular that by “collecting, evaluating, and reflecting on diverse sources pertaining to the target culture in the ePortfolio, the learner will become aware that culture is not static and that it varies according to the social context” (p. 50). In the first phase, the focus was on multimodality based on frequent interaction with authentic digital media, such as news clips, podcasts, images or film clips. The students were also to share multimedia that they found or created, such as images, storyboards, memes, GIFs, audio and video clips. The public nature of putting these online and sharing them with classmates for peer input seemed to make students more aware of their decisions in the creation or choice to use certain multimedia. Jones et al. (2019) found that students knowing it would be seen by more than just an instructor produced higher quality work.

The New London Group (1996)

Selber (2004)

Lotherington and Jenson (2011) and Jones et al. (2019) all agree with the New London Group’s (1996) and Selber’s (2004) views that much of the responsibility lies with the instructors for incorporating ways to practice digital literacy in their classrooms. Selber’s (2004) argument that digital literacy pedagogy is the domain of humanities instructors seems to have been accepted by these authors to the point that they do not feel the need to include that in their arguments of why digital literacy pedagogy is an important component of language, specifically second language, instruction. They have embraced Selber’s (2004) ideas that exploring the rhetorical and cultural aspects of digital composition, as well as reflecting on these, are crucial to building the kind of literacy that will actually benefit students. Lotherington and Jenson (2011) and Jones et al. (2019) rely on the concepts of multiliteracies outlined by the New London Group (1996). While Lotherington and Jenson (2011) specifically reference this seminal work’s influence on their own, Jones et al. (2019) also use these ideas of multiliteracies being crucial to students’ abilities to be part of societies, part of the modern workforce, and able to find their own voices.

Another point the articles and chapters agree on is that there is continued resistance on the part of instructors to incorporate technology in their pedagogy. Though they are written decades apart, they show that this reluctance still persists. Many scholars agree that it is important for students to learn digital literacy. Many instructors, though, are hoping that it will fall to someone else to do it.

Main Texts

James, K. S., Scida, E. E., & Firdyiwek, Y. (2019). ePortfolios in a world language learning curriculum. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.), ePortfolio as curriculum: Models and practices for developing students’ ePortfolio literacy (pp. 47-70). Stylus Publishing.

Lotherington, H., & Jenson, J. (2011). Teaching multimodal and digital literacy in L2 settings: New Literacies, new Basics, new Pedagogies. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 226–246.

Other References

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S., & Nakata, M. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4, 164–195.

Gee, J. P. (2010). New digital media and learning as an emerging area and “worked examples” as one way forward. MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. Routledge.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.

National Standards Collaborative Board (2015). World readiness standards for learning languages (4th ed.). American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Selber, S. A. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. SIU Press.