MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE

COMPETENCE

LA SALLE UNIVERSITYSCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES

BA IN SPANISH, ENGLISH, AND FRENCH

YAMITH J. FANDIÑOBOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays literacy has been understood as a social practice, as a complex set of reading, writing, and technological skills which joins verbal, visual, and other meaning-making resources (Heberle, 2010, p. 101)

MULTILITERACY (Bezerra, 2011).

Our globalized and culturally diverse demands a better understanding of how verbal language and images construe representations of our experience and relationships between social actors as well as how these are brought together in a text as a cultural construct.

The New London Group: A new approach to literacy pedagogy, made up of four components:

1. Situated practice refers to the need to approach whatever meaning-making resource from the starting point of the personal experiences of students so that they can locate themselves in relation to the study to be done.

MULTILITERACY (Bezerra, 2011)

2. Overt instruction would be the moment to provide students with the metalanguage to carry specific investigations; e.g. visual grammar. It provides students with the tools to understand “new” texts, images and ideas.

3. Critical framing is fostered by having students interpret the contextual background and values which inform whatever social practice and its related written, visual, or audio text.

4. Transformed practice is the idea that students start designing their own practices based on the new knowledge in the same or in new contexts. This is the moment when students could demonstrate an appropriation of a new mindset towards the reading of varied texts.

MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (Haberle, 2010)

Communicative competenceHymes (1972) Canale and Swain (1980)

Strategies and skills to understand and produce oral and written texts.

Use of appropriate language forms (lexis, grammar, syntax), pragmatics and negotiation of meaning, adequate to the situation.

Use of metafunctions to link grammar and functions of language for communication: ideational (representation of experiences), interpersonal (construction of relationships), and textual (organization of message).

MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (Haberle, 2010)

MCCIt involves the knowledge and use of language concerning the visual, audio and spatial dimensions of communication, including computer-mediated communication.

ESL/EFL learners should be familiar with different literacy practices that incorporate semiotic meanings.

The experience with different kinds of multimodal texts in the English-speaking world become a very productive means for developing students’ multimodal communicative competence in English (.

THE RELEVANCE OF MULTIMODALITY IN ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)

Students have to interpret and produce texts which integrate visual and verbal modalities, not to mention more complex interweavings of sound, image and verbiage.

Metafunctions in visual grammar - Representational/ideational: verbal and visual

construction of events, objects, participants, and circumstances.

- Interactive/interpersonal: verbal and visual construction of relationships among speakers/listeners, writers/readers, and viewers.

- Compositional/textual: distribution of information value and emphasis among elements of the text and image.

VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)

- The representational functionHhow participant, objects, and events are realized through narrative or conceptual representations.

• Narrative representationsActions and reactions connecting participants.

Thought and speech.

VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)

• Conceptual representations: Images that can- Classify covert or over taxonomy, - Show part-whole relationships (analytical structured or

unstructured), - Attribute/suggest values.

VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)- The interactional metafunctionThe interrelation between the image and the viewer. It can be analyzed in terms of:• Interaction (contact): demand or offer,• Social distance: intimate (close shot), social (medium shot), or

impersonal (long shot), • Attitude: involvement (frontal angle) or detachment (oblique

angle), • Power: represented participant (low angle), the viewer (high

angle) or equality (eye-level angle),• and realism: use of color, context, depth, detail and light

interplay.

VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)- The compositional metafunctionThe distribution of elements and information in the image. It can analyze:• Information value: the layout in regard to the left-right, top-

bottom, or center-margin positioning, • Framing: strong or weak, whether elements are shown as

connected or disconnected,• Salience: prominence through relative size, color or

foregrounding.

Opportunities for multimodality in ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)

A focus on form which promotes meaningful communication seems to be the best practice in ESL/EFL.

CLT classroom gives prominence to:- Activities that require interaction- Use of authentic texts and activities- Learner-centered approaches based on students’ backgrounds,

language needs and goals.

Task-based instruction fosters negotiation of meaning and problem-solving whereas content-based instruction integrates academic content with language-teaching objectives.

Using visuals and developing a metalanguage of visual literacy in the classroom may lead to meaningful language practice.

Incorporation of multimodal skills in ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)

PICTURE COLLECTION

VIDEO GAMES ADVERTISEMENTS

- Data bank- Sets emphasizing

different action or concepts (representational), relations between interlocutors (interactive) and visual arrangements (compositional).

- Discuss visual-verbal synergy.

- Research and present about cultural heritage.

- Suitable and motivating for teenagers.

- Using games that are based on movies since the story and the characters can help negotiate meaning and work on reading images.

- Approach visual narratives and have visual analysis.

- Combination of symbols, discourses, and cultural forms.

- They provide information about our society, linking images of people, products, and well-being.

- Give details about the pictures in terms of visual metalanguage.

- Analyze the broader sociocultural context.

MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED STRATEGIES

The appraisal system network (Martin, 2000).

1. ATTITUDE: Feelings and emotional reactions. - Affect: Resources for expressing feelings.- Judgment: Resources for judging character. - Appreciation: Resources for valuing the worth of things.

2. GRADUATION: Resources to strengthen or weaken attitude. - Force: Raise or lower the degree of evaluation.- Focus: Sharpen or soften boundaries between categories.- 3. ENGAGEMENT: The play of voices around opinions in discourse.- Monogloss: Undialogized bare assertion- Heterogloss: Dialogistic or alternative position.

MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED STRATEGIES

General questions (Meurer, 2001).

- How does this text represent the specific reality it relates to?

- What kind of social relations does this text reflect or bring about?

- What are the identities, or the social roles, involved in this text?

- How is the text organized to create certain representations, relations, and identities?

MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED STRATEGIES

Analysis of metafunctions (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996)

- What is the picture/text about? Who are the participants involved, and what circumstances are represented?

- What is the relationships between the viewer and what is viewed?

- How are the meanings conveyed? How are the representational structures and the interactive/interpersonal resources integrated into a whole?

CONCLUSION

In our globalized and culturally diverse world, “communication is increasingly multimodal”, hence the importance of devoting attention in the classroom to how semiotic resources other than verbal language have been used to create identities and to position people socially, especially for the fact that the school plays – or at least should play – a vital role in people’s individual, social, cultural and political development (Bezerra, 2011).

REFERENCES Bezerra, F. (2011). Multimodality in the EFL classroom. BELT journal,

2(2), 167-177. Canale, M. & M. Swain. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative

approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics, 1(1), 1-17.

Heberle, V. (2010). Multimodal literacy for teenage EFL students. Caderno de Letras, 27, 101-116.

Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293). Hasrmondworth, UK: Penguin.

Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.

Martin, J. R. (2000). Beyond exchange: Appraisal systems in English. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse (pp. 142-175). Oxford: OUP.

Meurer, J. L. (2001). The three non-mystifying questions you can ask and explore in the texts you bring to your EFL classrooms. APLISC newsletter, 8(2), 3-4.