Show Me: Principles for Assessing Students' Visual Literacy (original) (raw)

Visual Literacy: Modes and Media

When we question the traditional notion of what constitutes a text, some authors claim that image is text. In this respect the analytical approach based on social semiotics, and the works of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), Burn (2014) and Burn and Parker (2003) need to be taken in consideration. This calls for a multimodal approach to text analysis which is applicable to media narrative. The aim of this paper is to discuss Burn's multimodal theory of kineikonic analysis (2014, 5-8) which ascribes the meaning of making of film to the transcription of modes. In this respect, one should bear in mind the importance of a viewer's perception when looking into a cultural content within a realm of media narrative. Secondly, it emphasizes the importance of keeping the educational role clearly in mind while setting an example on a pragmatic level of second language acquisition.

Visual and Media Literacy Put into Practice: Creating Multimodal Texts in ELT

In this chapter, the author explores the concept and teaching potential of visual and media literacy and discusses the creation of digital visual narratives as a means to develop critical media literacy. Based on an example from her university class, the author argues that a hands-on approach of creating digital visual reader-responses to literary texts is a highly beneficial tool to not only develop but also experience visual and media literacy. In the process of creating digital visual narrations using the Web 2.0 application Pixton, students additionally reflect the representation of the protagonists' ethnic and cultural identity within the text and in their surrounding environment, thus fostering intercultural awareness.. This creative reader-response approach allows combining literary literacy with the development of visual and media literacy in digital learning settings.

Teaching Literacy Skills through Multimodal Texts

2020

Multimodal Discourse is a theory of communication in multimedia. The notion of modes refers to semiotic resources which allow the simultaneous realization of discourses and types of (inter)action. Media are the material resources being used for the production such as music, language, and images. This study examined Iranian EFL learners’ perception of multimodal texts. The objective of the study was to examine how Iranian EFL learners utilized their general literacy practices and multimodal repertoires to develop their meaning-making process. The participants were 18 intermediate EFL learners attending Iran Language Institute (ILI), and were exposed to advertisement materials. They were asked to reconstruct their perceptions both visually and verbally. The participants’ responses were analyzed according to the social semiotics model suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001). Results revealed that the participants made contextualized perceptions of the advertisement materials indicati...

Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms

Review of Research in Education, 2008

T he characteristics of contemporary societies are increasingly theorized as global, fluid , and networked . These conditions underpin the emerging knowledge economy as it is shaped by the societal and technological forces of late capitalism. These shifts and developments have significantly affected the communicational landscape of the 21st century. A key aspect of this is the reconfiguration of the representational and communicational resources of image, action, sound, and so on in new multimodal ensembles. The terrain of communication is changing in profound ways and extends to schools and ubiquitous elements of everyday life, even if these changes are occurring to different degrees and at uneven rates . It is against this backdrop that this critical review explores school multimodality and literacy and asks what these changes mean for being literate in this new landscape of the 21st century. The two key arguments here are that it is not possible to think about literacy solely as a linguistic accomplishment and that the time for the habitual conjunction of language, print literacy, and learning is over. As writes, It is no longer possible to think about literacy in isolation from a vast array of social, technological and economic factors. Two distinct yet related factors deserve to be particularly highlighted. These are, on the one hand, the broad move from the now centuries long dominance of writing to the new dominance of the image and, on the other hand, the move from the dominance of the medium of the book to the dominance of the medium of the screen. These two together are producing a revolution in the uses and effects of literacy and of associated means for representing and communicating at every level and in every domain. (p. 1) My claim here is that how knowledge is represented, as well as the mode and media chosen, is a crucial aspect of knowledge construction, making the form of representation integral to meaning and learning more generally. That is, the ways in which something is represented shape both what is to be learned, that is, the curriculum content, and how it is to be learned. It follows, then, that to better understand learning and teaching in the multimodal environment of the contemporary classroom, it is essential to explore the 241

Multimodality, “Reading”, and “Writing” for the 21st Century

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2005

As words fly onto the computer screen, revolve, and dissolve, image, sound, and movement enter school classrooms in ''new'' and significant ways, ways that reconfigure the relationship of image and word. In this paper I discuss these ''new'' modal configurations and explore how they impact on students' text production and reading in English schools. I look at the changing role of writing on screen, in particular how the visual character of writing and the increasingly dominant role of image unsettle and decentre the predominance of word. Through illustrative examples of ICT applications and students' interaction with these in school English and science (and games in a home context), I explore how they seem to promote image over writing. More generally, I discuss what all of this means for literacy and how readers of school age interpret multimodal texts.

Visual Literacy Development through the Mediation of Grade 4 English Textbooks

Journal of Visual Literacy, 2013

The multimodal world learners inhabit demands visual literacy among other literacies if learners are to effectively navigate its terrain. In this study, we sought to understand the extent to which five Grade 4 English textbooks currently used in some schools in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa facilitated the development of visual literacy through their presentation of visuals. A review of literature on the merits and tenets of, as well as studies related to, visual literacy development informed the categories that we used for a content analysis of the textbooks. Findings from the study point to an acceptable level of quantitative use of visuals in all the textbooks which, however, is not adequately complemented by a qualitative use of the visuals for visual literacy development. On the basis of that conclusion, we recommend the constant review of materials design and textbook design in particular, to ensure they are reflective of the current literacies; as well as the need for teachers to institute compensatory measures to counter the limitations of the textbooks.