Use of Memes, GIFs and Social Media Posts in Modern Language Learning: A Narrative Review (original) (raw)

Language Learning: Taking Memes into Account, Is It Accessible?

Agnes Dian Purnama, 2016

Our students nowadays are characterized by their split identities, both as student in real life and also as netizen in virtual life. Their first identity is commonly identified with traditional classroom learning setting. Meanwhile, their second identity remarkably falls upon technology product existence where they spend most of their time virtually and breath mobile applications‘ as second life. By exercising mobile applications usage which is quite handy, they roam around the virtual world to meet their needs; downloading and uploading files, giving comments or sharing page; activities that are currently known as part of participatory culture. Taking advantage of those particular identities, memes are considered as an alternative to bridge students‘ real and virtual life as well as an attempt of utilizing current advance of technology. This paper is intended to reveal the accessibility of using memes as one of digital products in language learning. Since memes are incredibly hype and mobile, it can be used as an implementation of multi-literacies in teaching media. Students‘ addiction to visual product, catchy phrases or sentences that are embodied into memes, and youth‘s likability to participate in ―what is happening now‖ would be beneficial to be involved in learning activity.

Teaching visual literacy through memes in the language classroom

The paradigm shift that occurred in the digital era (Bearne, 2003) towards the predominance of multimodal texts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) has affected the role of the reader (Kress, 2010; Serafini, 2012), who is currently expected to approach texts from a multimodal/tripartite framework (Serafini, 2014). With a focus on the teaching of visual literacy through memes in the language classroom, this paper seeks to share the workshop pedagogical proposal that we launched in one of our Master’s courses for EFL/ESL secondary school teachers at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) during the first term of the academic year 2016-2017. Our aim was twofold: (i) share our meme-based visual proposal; and (ii) give value to the teaching plans developed by our Master’s students while assessing the implementation results of both the workshop and the lesson plans at secondary and tertiary education levels.

Memes and education: opportunities, approaches and perspectives

Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal

This article presents the results of an international research of using Internet-memes in education process. The writing team set out to explore the reasons and ways of using Internet memes in education in different language spaces – English, Italian, Russian and Chinese. To achieve this goal, a number of tasks were formulated, including: 1. to study the linguistic factor of the use of memes in the educational process, 2. to classify the ways of using memes depending on the purpose, 3. to analyze the content of memes in the liberal, ideological, as well as in the field of exact sciences. The first part of the research made by Alexander Malakhov (PFUR) reveals the basic concepts associated with Internet memes. The second one written by Olga Matys (PFUR) is about using memes in a sphere of Russian liberal education in journalism. The third part of the research made by Ludovico De Serio (University of Genoa) presents an analysis using memes during studying math. The last but not the le...

Humour Discourse in Internet Memes: An Aid in ESL Classrooms

Asia Pacific Media Educator, 2019

In the ever-changing classroom dynamics of the twenty-first century, teaching needs to be innovative in order to be effective. The youth of the present age are members of virtual societies communicating mostly through the digital medium. This digital communication has its effects on the traditional classroom lectures. There has been a marked decline in basic language skills. Learners are less attentive and need more motivation. Interactive method of teaching is the best method of teaching language. But for this, the learners have to participate in the classroom and contribute something of their own. Learners have to be taught in a method that interests them and makes the language taught to them relevant in context. There is a need to incorporate digital communicative medium inside the language classroom in an enterprising and novel way while maintaining a low affective filter. For this, teachers have to adopt a systematic approach to digital technology. They need to be more versatil...

On the Language of Internet Memes [Dissertation]

Internet Memes transverse and sometimes transcend cyberspace on the back of impossibly cute LOLcats speaking mangled English and the snarky remarks of Image Macro characters always on the lookout for someone to undermine. No longer the abstract notion of a cultural gene that Dawkins (2006) introduced in the late 1970s, memes have now become synonymous with a particular brand of vernacular language that internet users engage by posting, sharing and remixing digital content as they communicate jokes, emotions and opinions. For the purpose of this research the language of Internet Memes is understood as visual, succinct and capable of inviting active engagement by users who encounter digital content online that exhibits said characteristics. Internet Memes were explored through an Arts-Based Educational Research framework by first identifying the conventions that shape them and then interrogating these conventions during two distinct research phases. In the first phase the researcher, as a doctoral student in art and visual culture education, engaged class readings and assignments by generating digital content that not only responded to the academic topics at hand but did so through forms associated with Internet Memes like Image Macros and Animated GIFs. In the second phase the researcher became a meme literacy facilitator as learners in three different age-groups were led in the reading, writing and remixing of memes during a month-long summer art camp where they were also exposed to other art-making processes such as illustration, acting and sculpture. Each group of learners engaged age-appropriate meme types: 1) the youngest group, 6 and 7 year-olds, wrote Emoji Stories and Separated at Birth memes; 2) the middle group, 8-10 year-olds, worked with Image Macros and Perception memes, 3) while the oldest group, 11-13 year-olds, generated Image Macros and Animated GIFs. The digital content emerging from both research phases was collected as data and analyzed through a hybrid of Memetics, Actor-Network Theory, Object Oriented Ontology, Remix Theory and Glitch Studies as the researcher shifted shapes yet again and became a Research Jockey sampling freely from each field of study. A case is made for Internet Memes to be understood as an actor-network where meme collectives, individual cybernauts, software and source material are all actants interrelating and making each other enact collective agencies through shared authorships. Additionally specific educational contexts are identified where the language of Internet Memes can serve to incorporate technology, storytelling, visual thinking and remix practices into art and visual culture education. Finally, the document reporting on the research expands on the hermeneutics of Internet Memes and the phenomenological experiences they elicit that are otherwise absent from traditional scholarly prose. Chapter by chapter the dissertation was crafted as a journey from the academic to the whimsical, from the lecture hall to the image board (where Internet Memes were born), from the written word to the remixed image as a visual language that is equal parts form and content that emerges and culminates in a concluding chapter composed almost entirely of popular Internet Meme types. An online component can be found at http://memeducation.org/

Internet Memes as Cultural Education Tools in L2 Teaching

DEStech Transactions on Social Science, Education and Human Science, 2020

The paper considers Internet memes as cultural education tools in L2 teaching. Normally considered as humorous and highly entertaining items in social networking communication, Internet memes can also be used to acquire social and cultural awareness in the context of secondary education. Internet memes have certain similarities with lexis and text. These properties define the algorithm for working with the memes: text-like qualities of memes state the structure of the algorithm and lexis-like qualities are responsible for its variable part. It makes it possible to combine teaching methods traditionally applied to lexis and text to Internet memes in L2 with information technology tools (meme generator programs), which results in a complex of classroom activities aimed at using Internet memes as education tools. Given the cultural capital of the Internet memes, the authors believe the efficiency of the aforementioned activities in teaching L2 students language and culture.

Internet Memes – A New Literacy?

2014

This paper examines the recently emerged multimodal artefacts commonly known as Internet memes in the light of the new literacies that are rapidly emerging in the digital age. Attention is paid particularly to the most popular type of Internet meme – image macros – with Joseph Ducreux as a model meme, analyzing and demonstrating their features as well as their correlation with the theoretical framework of new literacies. The paper includes a brief introduction to the theory of new literacies in relation to Internet memes followed by a description of memetic selectivity, distribution, classification and the linguistic and non-linguistic peculiarities of this phenomenon that expand the traditional notion of literacy.

Internet memes: classroom perspectives in the context of digital cultures

2019

espanolEste articulo objetiva presentar reflexiones acerca de la adopcion de memes de internet como posibilidades para la ensenanza en el contexto de las culturas digitales. Los memes implican en la edicion, comparticion, lectura y reacciones a una gran variedad de textos graficos, videos, fotos y canciones que reflejan nuestras relaciones cotidianas. El estudio se basa en la perspectiva de los multiletramentos (COPE y KALANTZIS, 2000, 2008, LANKSHEAR y KNOBEL, 2007, LEMKE, 2009, MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2011), asi como en los estudios sobre los memes realizados por Dawkins (1976), Shifman (2013, 2014), Shifman et al (2016), Chagas (2017, 2018) y Glaveanu (2018). Las sugerencias de ensenanza se basan en las categorias de analisis de memes; en el remixado de memes con el proposito de explorar los discursos de ideologias dominantes, aspectos de raza, edad, genero y clase social; y la lectura y escritura de los memes politicos como instrumentos de persuasion. EnglishThis paper aims at present...

Joy of Learning Through Internet Memes

International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 2020

The currency of today’s social media is influence. The influence is any action or reaction by which you can drive your thoughts on people’s mind through social platforms. Internet memes are getting very popular in today’s generation. With the rise of technology and technological devices, the ability of concentration of young minds has drastically reduced. In a typical case, the classroom-based teaching tools like blackboard, PPT, videos are no more appreciated by the newer generation. This is because today's generation is practical oriented and wants skills to acquire and do not want traditional teaching which enforce memory rather than knowledge. They want class-room-based teaching methods to be innovative. Looking at the popularity of the memes, the paper shares and experiences of use of internet memes from existing papers available on the internet. Based on the available literature survey, the two research questions were formed in order to examine the perception on memes in s...

Utilizing Memes to Promote Students’ Motivation in Language Classroom

2018

Keeping students’ motivation to learn L2 is a challenging activity in teaching and learning process. Teachers are expected to perform their job dutifully by engaging students into attractive learning activities. At the same time, they are also contested with students’ characteristics diversity. The utilization of memes is a proposed teaching strategy to minimize the gap between students’ traits, technology rapid development, and the constant need of renewing effort to enhance students’ performance. Seeking an opportunity of integrating between various mobile application, gadgets as well as internet access, memes creation may be considered as a breakthrough in educational field. The result of this study shows students’ positive responses in creating memes activity. Most of the EFL students’ responses stated that the activity is interesting therefore it is able to boost their motivation. The activity covers up three essential motivation values for learning an L2; intrinsic value, inte...