Kristin Lange's Abstracts

Kristin Lange's Abstracts

     Kristin Lange
     Ph.D. Student
     Second Language Acquisition & Teaching

      Conference Summary
      2017 Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention
      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

 

 

Abstract 1

Everyday Literacies – Teaching and Learning with Vernacular Texts in the Foreign Language Classroom

Literacy studies have provided us with frameworks and concepts often stemming from first language (L1) education, that have resonated strongly in scholarly discourses of second language (L2) education and have been interpreted for several L2 contexts. Although L2 education recognizes the value of communicative language teaching and its pedagogical principles of learner-focus and real-life communication, the field has seen recent shifts to meaning-based language teaching. Often taking seminal work on literacies from L1 education as their base line (Cazden et al. 1996, Knobel and Lankshear 2007, Cope and Kalantzis 2009), these calls for literacy-based language teaching advocate for a focus on critical language awareness, digital communication, meta-language and (self-)reflective elements in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. In these approaches, literacies are understood as a wide-array of community-based social practices (Knobel & Lankshear 2007) which involve elements of experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying texts (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). However, texts are not treated as objects (realia), as they have been in more traditional L2 teaching approaches, but as literacy practices which are complex and embedded in dynamic social lives.
Still, successful implementation of literacy-based approaches in L2 classrooms has been difficult and often we can find narratives of successful implementations only in classrooms for advanced learners. Therefore, this paper suggests everyday literacy practices and processes as literacies that are not necessarily of academic nature, but also part of everyday lives, the vernacular and the local. Everyday literacies encompass complex language and social practices enacted in people’s everyday lives (Knobel 1999), “the kinds of reading and writing practices that take place beyond the sanctioned walls of classrooms and halls of academe” (Haas et al. 2011, p. 399). The paper first compares and distinguishes everyday literacies with several of the literacy frameworks from L1 and L2 education such as the New London Group’s Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, Knobel and Lankshear’s New Literacies, genre theory, and multiliteracies as understood by Kern, Allen, Paesani, and Dupuy. After establishing these theoretical foundations, several practical examples, like apartment ads, that aim to promote the development of everyday literacies in a second semester German classroom will be shown. The processes of developing everyday literacies will be illustrated through an analysis of collected students work.

 

Abstract 2

Changing the role and use of textbooks in foreign language classrooms

Communicative language teaching (CLT) has been advocated as one of the most effective approaches in foreign languages pedagogy and is still the dominant mode of instruction that many language programs and textbook companies adopt. Although L2 education recognizes the value of CLT and its pedagogical principles of learner-focus and real-life communication, the field has seen recent shifts to meaning-based language teaching, and particularly literacies-based approaches have been suggested as an alternative to the oral communication bias often seen in communicative language teaching (CLT). Literacy becomes plural in this approach and is understood as a wide-array of community-based social practices (Knobel & Lankshear 2007). So-called multiliteracies approaches promote more nuanced attention to written language, as well as more creative and critical awareness of language use, that is not (yet) found in most commercial textbooks for language classroom. Additionally, perhaps in part because of their dependence on commercial textbooks, multiliteracies approaches have not supplanted CLT as an organizing principle for foreign language curricula (see Allen and Paesani 2007).
What is thus needed are models for how to adapt textbooks so that they can be used to complement these changes in language instruction, the focus of the proposed paper. After establishing multiliteracies as the theoretical framework, the presenter will describe an approach to subverting communicative-oriented language textbooks by reframing typical communicative language teaching through multiliteracies tasks using everyday literacy practices, focusing on the creative and critical aspects of those texts. Particular focus of this approach will be everyday literacies, that is “the kinds of reading and writing practices that take place beyond the sanctioned walls of classrooms and halls of academe” (Haas et al. 2011, p. 399) and the kind of literacy practices that focus on students’ actual lives and how students use or will use language outside of language classrooms.

Lay Abstract

The two papers that I will present at the MLA convention are part of a larger research project for my dissertation. I am looking at two approaches of foreign language teaching, communicative language teaching (CLT) and multiliteracies approaches, and how they can be understood and realized in coherent language curricula and with language textbooks. CLT has been advocated as one of the most effective approaches to teach foreign languages and is still the dominant approach to teaching foreign languages that language programs and textbook companies adopt. It promotes learner-focused language teaching and language use, as well as communication in real-life contexts; elements which have guided curriculum development, textbooks, and training in the profession. However, the last decade has seen a conceptual shift in the teaching of foreign languages and multiliteracies approaches have been suggested as an alternative to the oral communication bias often seen in CLT as well as a way to promote language awareness and critical thinking skills. Literacy, no longer limited to the ability to read and write, becomes plural in this approach and is understood as a wide-array of community-based social practices (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007).
With few exceptions, multiliteracies approaches have not supplanted or complemented CLT as an organizing principle for foreign language curricula and scholars have pointed us to several obstacles that prevent efficient applications (e.g. Allen and Paesani 2010). Previous studies have often focused on the development of advanced literacy skills (Maxim 2009, Byrnes 2005) and everyday literacies, as well as beginning foreign language learners, have gotten little attention. Furthermore, dominant commercial foreign language textbooks often comply with CLT or other more traditional approaches to language teaching. These texts address several important issues of foreign language learning very well (for instance vocabulary and grammatical structure progression). However, textbooks also often structure the curriculum of foreign language programs quite rigorously, as well as guide and direct novice language teachers, which makes it challenging to integrate multiliteracies approaches. What is needed are models for how textbooks can be used to complement CLT and multiliteracies approaches. In my papers, I will describe an approach to subverting communicative-oriented language textbooks by reframing typical textbook texts and activities through multiliteracies tasks using everyday literacy practices and focusing on the creative and critical aspects of those texts.