Integrating Multiliteracies into the English Language Classroom

"From the case studies, we have highlighted examples of how children’s digital multimodal composing practices in the first space showcase their creativity, critical thinking, and a semiotic awareness in their meaning-making. These are the literacies that are commonly identified in curricular goals of many education systems as well. We join other scholars in advancing the argument that schools and educators should bridge the disconnect between children’s home literacy activities and what students are learning in school. This, we argue in this article, can be achieved by creating a third space [in schools] where the two meet, and where children's new ways of meaning-making in the digital age are recognised, valued, and nurtured."

Excerpt from Children’s Digital Multimodal Composing: Implications for Learning and Teaching, published in the journal Learning, Media, and Technology.

Project Team

In today’s digital era, literary practices are no longer limited to language use and include multimodal texts like images, videos, and websites. The English curriculum has acknowledged the importance of multiliteracies, but this creates a challenge for educators in designing appropriate materials for multimodal learning.

This design-based, iterative study focuses on working directly with students and teachers to co-create tools and packages that support pedagogical transformation through interactions with different media.

From March-December 2019, the research team used class observations, surveys, focus group discussions (FGDs), and interviews across five primary and secondary schools to assess teachers’ and students’ perceptions, practices, and experiences regarding multiliteracies. This was followed by a design process lasting from 2020-2021 involving workshops, co-design sessions, and seminars to develop a multiliteracies instructional approach for teachers.

Findings showed that student attitudes toward multiliteracies were mostly positive, and they desired more multimodal learning experiences. Teachers found the new approach useful and reported a greater confidence in teaching multiliteracies. Students showed improved ability in viewing, representing, and different ways of making meaning.

Other than subsequent reports and publications, this study generated six learning packages for multiliteracies teaching in the English classroom and one assessment package for testing on multimodal texts.

This study highlighted the growing need for multiliteracies adoption and preparation in school curriculums to enhance pedagogy and student learning experiences. Moreover, it directly empowered teachers to be designers of their own learning communities, giving them an opportunity to cultivate multimodal teaching practices.

Recommendations for Schools and Policymakers:

1. Optimize curriculum space for the teaching, learning, and formal assessment of multiliteracies, such as evaluating students’ creation of multimodal artifacts.
2. Design learning for multimodal literacy by teaching the viewing and representing of different media, as well as broadening the range and sequence of literacy skills taught to students.
3. Create opportunities for students’ multimodal meaning-making through collaborative and inductive learning activities.
4. Empower teachers through professional development to apply multiliteracies pedagogies.
5. Advance research on multiliteracies, especially on students’ out-of-school literacy practices, the impact of their backgrounds on learning, and social stratification within education in the digital age. 
   

Resources

Project website: https://sgeducationresearch.wixsite.com/sgelmultiliteracies

Project report:

• Lim, F. V., Chia, A., Weninger, C., Tan-Chia, L., Nguyen, T. T. H., Tan, J. M., Peters, C. M., Adams, J. L., Towndrow, P. A., & Unsworth, L. (2022). Multiliteracies in the Singapore English language classroom: Designing learning (Report No. DEV 01/18 VL). National Institute of Education (Singapore), Office of Education Research. NIE Digital Repository. https://hdl.handle.net/10497/24079 

Featured in media:

• English Language Institute of Singapore: Building Multiliteracies in EL Classrooms (Episode 1)
• SingTeach Article: Multiliteracies

Selected articles:

• Lim, F.V., Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2022). A metalanguage for learning: Rebalancing the cognitive with the socio-material. Frontiers in Communication, 7.
• Lim, F.V., Weninger, C., & Nguyen, T.T.H. (2021). ‘I expect boredom’ – Students’ experiences and expectations of multiliteracies learning. Literacy, 55(2), 102-112.

Book:

• Lim, F.V. & Tan-Chia, L. (2023). Designing learning for multimodal literacy: Teaching viewing and representing. London & New York: Routledge

Book chapter:

• Lim, F.V. (2021). Towards Education 4.0: An agenda for teaching multiliteracies in the English language classroom. In F.A. Hamied (Ed.), Literacies, Culture, and Society towards Industrial Revolution 4.0: Reviewing Policies, Expanding Research, Enriching Practices in Asia (pp. 11-30). New York: Nova Science.