Multimodality in Language Education – Implications for Teaching
Publication details
| Year: | 2019 |
| DOI: | 10.16993/dfl.127 |
| Issued: | 2019 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 11 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page: | 127 |
| End Page: | 137 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Magnusson P.; Godhe A.-L. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | Designs for Learning |
| Publisher: | Stockholm University Press |
| Topics: | Learning; Internet usage, practices and engagement |
| Sample: | "[T]he work done in a class in the second year of upper secondary school in Sweden and a teaching unit on poetry." (Authors, 130) |
| Implications For Educators About: | Professional development; Other |
Abstract
The aim of this article is to discuss how a multimodal approach to meaning-making can contribute to language education and how multimodal meaning-making is supported in the Swedish curricula. Considering the rapid digitalization of contemporary communication, the aim and content of language education has been challenged. The article describes contemporary communication and meaning-making from a socio-semiotic, multimodal approach. Based on an example from a poetry assignment and students’ solutions in a Swedish as a first language framework, we want to discuss the possibilities and challenges for meaning-making and teaching, while opening up the subject of Swedish for multimodality. Two poems are viewed from a multimodal perspective showing the usage of different modes and media. Based on this the article investigates the support in the curricula for multimodal meaning-making. The article concludes by stressing the importance of recognizing multimodal meaning-making as learning in language education.
Outcome
"[There is] a need to widen language subjects to include multimodal meaning-making fully and on both general and specific levels.... The multimodal framework makes it possible to teach and learn about contemporary meaning-making by using the metafunctions and by naming and addressing both the general and the specific levels of each mode, including the verbal modes." (Authors, 134)