multimodal concept drawings: engaging eal learners in brainstorming about course terms

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21st Century Language Skills Multimodal Concept Drawings: Engaging EAL Learners in Brainstorming About Course Terms ANN N. AMICUCCI University of Colorado, Colorado Springs TRACY LASSITER Indiana University of Pennsylvania The authors describe a multimodal concept drawing activity designed to facilitate students’ understanding of terms used within an assignment in a first-year college writing course. In this activity, students write ideas, read definitions, study images, and create multimodal representations of a term in groups of class- room peers. The activity allows students of English as an addi- tional language (EAL) with varying levels of English proficiency to engage with course terms and gives multilingual and monolin- gual students the opportunity to co-construct knowledge. doi: 10.1002/tesj.161 When an instructor introduces a new assignment in a writing course, English as an additional language (EAL) students may struggle to conceptualize terms used within the context of the assignment. As a result, we can use a multimodal brainstorming activity to engage all levels of EAL students with course concepts. In the multimodal concept drawing activity, students read a term and write down what the term brings to mind, then work in groups to collect definitions, gather images, and depict various understandings of the term in a visual representation. The activity gives students the chance to brainstorm new ways of understanding a course concept, even when abilities to do so in English are limited. Such multimodal composing processes afford TESOL Journal 5.3, September 2014 523 © 2014 TESOL International Association

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Page 1: Multimodal Concept Drawings: Engaging EAL Learners in Brainstorming About Course Terms

21st Century Language Skills

Multimodal Concept Drawings:Engaging EAL Learners in

Brainstorming About CourseTerms

ANN N. AMICUCCIUniversity of Colorado, Colorado Springs

TRACY LASSITERIndiana University of Pennsylvania

The authors describe a multimodal concept drawing activitydesigned to facilitate students’ understanding of terms usedwithin an assignment in a first-year college writing course. In thisactivity, students write ideas, read definitions, study images, andcreate multimodal representations of a term in groups of class-room peers. The activity allows students of English as an addi-tional language (EAL) with varying levels of English proficiencyto engage with course terms and gives multilingual and monolin-gual students the opportunity to co-construct knowledge.doi: 10.1002/tesj.161

When an instructor introduces a new assignment in a writingcourse, English as an additional language (EAL) students maystruggle to conceptualize terms used within the context of theassignment. As a result, we can use a multimodal brainstormingactivity to engage all levels of EAL students with course concepts.In the multimodal concept drawing activity, students read a termand write down what the term brings to mind, then work ingroups to collect definitions, gather images, and depict variousunderstandings of the term in a visual representation. The activitygives students the chance to brainstorm new ways ofunderstanding a course concept, even when abilities to do so inEnglish are limited. Such multimodal composing processes afford

TESOL Journal 5.3, September 2014 523© 2014 TESOL International Association

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EAL students brainstorming opportunities that are not limited byknowledge of course vocabulary.

MULTIMODAL COMPOSITION AND WORLDENGLISHESIn designing this multimodal brainstorming activity, we drew onthe New London Group’s (1996) concept of multimodality—alsocalled multiliteracies—in which linguistic, visual, aural, gestural,and spatial modes of communication are intertwined in theprocess of meaning making. Combining these communicativedesign elements changes learning, and such combinations can beused as the basis for considering how pedagogy should adapt tochanges in literacy due to globalization, technology, and culturaland social diversity (New London Group, 1996). We can draw onthe complexity of students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds ina writing course while also accommodating EAL students’ varyinglevels of language proficiency by offering opportunities tocommunicate meaning in both linguistic and other modes.

Multimodal composition allows students to work with courseconcepts as they are still developing an understanding of courseterms. Takayoshi and Selfe (2007) have written,

In a world where communication between individuals andgroups is both increasingly cross-cultural and digital, teachersof composition are beginning to sense the inadequacy of texts—and composition instruction—that employ only one primarysemiotic channel (the alphabetic) to convey meaning. (p. 2)

By combining words with pictures in the classroom, for example,students can mimic the type of multimodal composition they engagein outside of school through photo-sharing blogs or applicationssuch as Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat. Such multimodalcomposition stretches students’ communicative resources beyondwords, making such activity one means of fostering both cross-cultural understanding and EAL student learning.

Multimodal activities are particularly valuable in writingeducation, in which a World Englishes approach to compositionnecessitates valuing students’ varying linguistic abilities. Studentsat Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), the context in which

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we utilized the multimodal concept drawing activity, bringmultiple languages and language varieties with them to theircomposition courses. As Horner and Trimbur (2002) have argued,such courses implicitly marginalize languages and languagevarieties other than standard written English (SWE) when SWE isthe only language variety taught or expected of students to utilize.Course activities that ask students to bring their own languagevarieties into brainstorming give these varieties a place in thecomposition classroom.

Furthermore, giving both multilingual and monolingualstudents a space in which to draw on their existing languagesallows these students to construct meaning collaboratively—tointeract with each other’s understandings of language and thenconstruct a mutual understanding together. As Canagarajah (2013)has explained, “For multilinguals, communication is not solely arational activity. . . . Multilinguals actively draw from intuition,perception, and imagination to co-construct meaning in linguafranca situations” (pp. 43–44). For EAL students, a compositionclassroom in which speaking and writing are conducted in Englishis a lingua franca situation in which a common language must beconstructed among multilingual and monolingual classroom peers.Multimodal brainstorming allows such co-constructed meaning totake place beyond alphabetic text, giving EAL and other studentsthe opportunity to draw from multiple intellectual resources toexplore their ideas in relation to course terms.

BRAINSTORMING ABOUT PLACE-BASED WRITINGTERMSIn Amicucci’s English 100: Basic Writing course, students wroteplace-based narrative essays—stories of the places they haveoccupied, the people with whom they have shared these spaces,and the meaning underlying their related memories andexperiences. Basic Writing, in our institutional context, is adevelopmental composition course reserved for students whoneed extra practice in English writing abilities to prepare for acollege-level writing course. Following this course, students takeEnglish 101: Composition I, in which they utilize a variety of

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reading and writing resources to compose projects in multiplegenres. Most students in Basic Writing come to IUP from withinthe United States; the student body in Composition I comprisesstudents from within the United States along with someinternational students. International and other EAL studentgroups bring a diverse background of linguistic abilities to ourclassrooms, as do students attending the university from withinthe United States, who come from a variety of contexts,including small towns in rural Pennsylvania and urban areaswithin the state near Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Although wedescribe one multimodal activity used specifically in one BasicWriting course, we have both used similar activities in otherfirst-year college writing and in college research writing courses.Such activities can be utilized in any writing course that servesstudents from multiple linguistic backgrounds.

To facilitate students’ brainstorming about ideas for their ownnarratives, we conducted the following multimodal conceptdrawing activity. First, we placed slips of paper containing termsrelated to the assignment in a bag; the bag contained multiplecopies of each term. The terms we used included place, space, home,family, location, occupy, and background. The purpose of this activitywas to facilitate students’ thinking about the multiple ways theseterms could be understood. The term background, for example, couldrefer to the events or circumstances of one’s past, or it could refer tothe objects or landscape behind the main activity of a given scene,and both of these understandings of the term were relevant towriting a place-based narrative. After each student chose a termfrom the bag, students wrote in their notebooks what the term madethem think of. Students could write sentences or simply make a listof other words. Students who were unfamiliar with the term theyreceived could use a translator to translate the term into a languagewith which they were more familiar; the results of translation couldlead to further discussion about the term’s meaning.

FINDING DEFINITIONS AND IMAGESNext, students located others in the room who had the same termand formed groups. Members of each group used any digitaldevices they had access to, including smartphones, tablets, or

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laptop computers, to locate and read definitions of the term online.One member of each group was chosen to be a note taker and tooknotes about the term’s multiple definitions. At this stage in theactivity, students could use a translator again to better understandvarious definitions they encountered. Following the gathering ofdefinitions, students searched for the term on Google Images andtook notes about the various images they found. Students couldtype in search terms in any language to locate relevant images.

In their group, students discussed what they found indefinitions and images and talked about whether these resultsmatched what the term originally made each student think of.Next, each group used colored markers to represent its term—including the term’s various definitions and images—visually on alarge sheet of paper. In this step, groups were asked to find a wayother than solely words to represent the term, such as by drawinga picture or making a collage of images and words together.Finally, each group presented its visual depiction to the class andexplained how the depiction represented the term.

COMPARING ONE’S OWN PERSPECTIVE WITHOTHERS’In multimodal concept drawings, students’ brainstormingincludes thinking about what a term means to the student him-or herself, what it means to the student’s classroom peers, andhow the term is presented to a broader public audience throughdefinitions and images online. The activity serves two purposes.First, the activity prompts students to reflect on how theirunderstanding of the term aligns with others’ understandings.Second, it provides a way for EAL students of varyingproficiency levels to brainstorm about a course concept in amanner that involves forms of communication other than words.Searching for images online allows EAL students to exploremultiple conceptualizations of a term even if they do not havethe language ability to do so.

For example, the term family may prompt one student to thinkof her multigenerational, 14-person family and another student tothink of his same-sex parents. Additionally, most students will

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have cultural and even ethnic associations with family. However,searching for this term in nearly any language on Google Imagesreturns a bevy of pictures of four-person families, including somewith actual people and some in cartoon or illustration. Most ofthese families are Caucasian, and nearly all depict heterosexualcouples as parents. By asking students to examine the differencesbetween their own understandings of family and those readilyavailable online, we can prompt students to discuss the term andto start thinking about how they will write their own stories offamily and other experiences.

STUDENTS’ MULTIMODAL INTERPRETATIONS OFTERMSWhen students in Amicucci’s Basic Writing course engaged in themultimodal concept drawing activity, we found one group’scollaborative interpretation of home to be important because it wasnot only representational, but referential (see Figure 1). In thisinterpretation of the term, students drew walls and furnishings torepresent their idea of home, depicted in this case as the commonsof the living room. They chose to include certain words, such asdoor or window, to emphasize the boundaries delineating the room.At the same time, students specifically included referential words

Figure 1. Student response to the term home

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such as space, living, and family as significant to their conception ofhome.

Other students who worked with the term place interpretedtheir term referentially as well, while also interpreting it literallyand metaphorically (see Figure 2). This group of students depictedplace literally by drawing a house, a beach, and even an apartmentbuilding where stick figures engage in daily routines.Referentially, they wrote words like region, state, and hometown aslocative terms related to place. Metaphorically—and perhaps mostinterestingly—they even conceived of place as a social construct, asevidenced by one stick figure admonishing another to “learn yourplace.” The phrase learn your place generated discussion amongmany students in the course, because some students were familiarwith the expression but others were not. We see potential for thisactivity to produce similar discussion of colloquialisms amongmultilingual and monolingual students in relation to course terms.

A third group of students depicted myriad conceptions of theterm background that extended well beyond associations to home orplace (see Figure 3). This group associated the term visually andaurally with movie settings and soundtracks. They also consideredhow the term is used socially, as in whether a person has a

Figure 2. Student response to the term place

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criminal background, and acknowledged aspects of individuals’personal background through the use of the related terms race,gender, age, and economic$. Furthermore, students employedmultimodal composition within individual words in thisdepiction, in their use of multiple colors to write the word colorand a combination of letters and symbols within the wordeconomic$, which employs alphabetic text along with a dollar signto connect an association of money with the term.

CONCLUSIONAs both teachers and teacher educators continue developing waysto best educate EAL students, especially in writing classroomscontaining a mix of multilingual and monolingual students, wecan turn to multimodal projects as a manner in which to valuestudents’ different literacies and create a bridge between theseexisting literacies and students’ understanding of English. Themultimodal concept drawings activity applies multimodal theoryto concept brainstorming in a writing course and specificallyconsiders how cultural and social diversity can impact languagecomprehension. In it, EAL students can draw upon their firstlanguage understanding of a particular course term in English,

Figure 3. Student response to the term background

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then engage in additional activities to more fully understand thatterm as a concept. Finally, the activity allows students to recognizethe nuanced differences of synonymous words to the key termand provides a way for EAL and other students to interact in acollaborative brainstorming process.

THE AUTHORSAnn N. Amicucci received her PhD in composition and TESOLfrom Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013. In August 2014,she will begin work as Director of First-Year Rhetoric and Writingand Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado,Colorado Springs.

Tracy Lassiter received her PhD in English literature and criticismfrom Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013. She mostrecently taught as a temporary English faculty member at IUP.Before entering her doctoral program, she taught 5 years full timefor Eastern Arizona College’s English Department.

REFERENCESCanagarajah, A. S. (2013). Negotiating translingual literacy: An

enactment. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1), 40–67.Horner, B., & Trimbur, J. (2002). English only and U.S.

college composition. College Composition and Communication, 53,594–630. doi:10.2307/1512118

New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy ofmultiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard EducationalReview, 66(1), 60–92.

Takayoshi, P., & Selfe, C. L. (2007). Thinking about multimodality.In C. L. Selfe (Ed.), Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers(pp. 1–12). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

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