Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 7: 206229, 2008
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN 1534-8458 print / 1532-7701 online DOI: 10.1080/15348450802237822 HLIE 1534-8458 1532-7701 Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Vol. 7, No. 3-4, June 2008: pp. 140 Journal of Language, Identity, and Education Meaning-Making, Multimodal Representation, and Transformative Pedagogy: An Exploration of Meaning Construction Instructional Practices in an ESL High School Classroom Meaning Construction in an ESL Classroom AJAYI Lasisi Ajayi San Diego State UniversityImperial Valley This study was an exploration of how high school language learners and their teacher jointly constructed word meanings through multimodal representation and the sociopolitical reality of learners lives as mediating factors in the context of simultaneous multiple learning activities. Thirty-three high school Advanced ESL 3 students were taught using a political text, photographs, and a campaign video clip. Using a variety of learning activitiesmeaning guessing, campaign advertisement, and cartoon strips; group and whole-class activitieslearners negotiated meanings of selected vocabulary items and phrases in the text. A close analysis of the stu- dents scripts revealed that they used multimodal resources as a tool to convey their identity/subjectivity in meaning-making engagements. I recommend a meaning- making theoretical framework and classroom practices that link English language learners with the sociocontextual frame of learning, critique and challenge social power relations between migrant English learners and the broader society, and emphasize transformation as the goal of pedagogical processes in the classroom. Key words: ESL teacher, meaning-making theory, word meaning, participatory pedagogy, transformative pedagogy, visual literacy Word meaning is a crucial aspect of ESL curriculum that high school language learners grapple with as they struggle to appropriate the lexico-semantic Correspondence should be sent to Lasisi Ajayi, Division of Education, San Diego State University Imperial Valley, 720 Heber Avenue, Calexico, CA 92231-2403. E-mail: lajayi@mail.sdsu.edu MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 207 meaning-making systems of academic English (Starfield, 2004; Toohey, 2003) to further their studies and position themselves as effective users of the language. For many English language learners, a decline in word-meaning scores (Department of Education, 1999, p. 19) usually signals a poor performance in English language learning and other school subjects. Perhaps students abysmal performance should not come as a surprise, as theoretical and pedagogical practices of meaning making tend to emphasize word recognition, word analysis, and literal comprehension of lexical items (Gee, 2000). Gee (2000) suggests that students poor performance in reading may be due to the fact that learners do not learn to use social languages for learning within sociocultur- ally recognizable and meaningful academic discourses (p. 413). Gee (2000, 2001) asserts that literacy as taught in many schools focuses on a narrow interpretation of reading as psycholinguistic processing skills (Gee, 2001, p. 714). Thus, instruc- tional practices tend to focus on second-language acquisition as a mental process and conceptualize learners as decontextualized and autonomous (Atkinson, 2002; Donato & McCormick, 1994). Obviously, such an approach does not seem to take into account the complex relationship between relations of power, identity, and language learning (Norton, 1995, p. 17) among learners and the broader society. Thus, this study starts with the position that vocabulary development and meaning making should be taught within a socio-contextual theoretical and pedagogical framework that integrates English language learners and the broader contexts of learning (Norton, 1995, 1997, 2000). This viewpoint is consistent with Nortons advocacy that a second-language acquisition (SLA) theory needs to question and challenge how relations of power in the social world affect social interaction (Norton 1995, p. 12) between language learners and the broader society. To achieve this goal, Auerbach (1995) suggests participatory pedagogy, where the teacher provides students a space to discover their own knowledge, create new knowledge, and act on this knowledge (p. 16). The aims of such a pedagogy are (a) to allow students involvement in curriculum processes and thus prepare them to raise questions about the inequalities in the broader society; and (b) to facilitate dialogue between the teacher and students in ways that allow learners to investigate the contexts of their lives and put their experiences at the core of curriculum. Different approaches to literacy (particularly Auerbach, 1995, 1996, 2000; Canagarajah, 1993; Freire, 2000; Gee, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007; Luke 1996; Norton, 1995, 1997, 2000; Norton & Toohey, 2001, 2004; Phillipson, 1992, 1999; Shor & Freire, 1987) have explored the relationship between language learning and the broader society. This body of work stresses that language is always used in relationship to contexts and construal of contexts that are social and cultural. For example, they contend that people give and take meaning through the lenses of their social and cultural identities. Norton and Toohey (2004) is representative of the perspective of the critical theorists: 208 AJAYI Language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a practice that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways language learners understand themselves, their histories, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future. (p. 1) Hence, critical theorists posit that SLA theorypractice dynamics should pay close attention to the interconnection and interaction among politics, power, language, and pedagogical practices. In particular, Norton (2000) suggests the need for researchers and teachers to understand the impact of prevailing social structures in contexts of learning English as a second language (ESL) by examin- ing the inequitable relations of power (p. 21) between learners and the broader society. In essence, for critical theorists, some of the fundamental questions become: How do language learners become conscious of themselves and the social possibilities available to them? How do ESL pedagogical practices connect language learning and use to issues of power, equity, and social justice? How can ESL pedagogy be deployed in ways that stimulate students to use their life situations, perspectives, and experiences to construct their own identities/ subjectivities? How do the changes in social and material affordances of the 21st century open up possibilities for students to remake texts by asserting their own identities through multimodal engagement? These are some of the fundamental questions that researchers of literacy and SLA need to address. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how language learners in high schools use visual representations and the social conditions of their lives to construct meanings that reflect their lived experiences. The hope is that this study will shed some light on some vitally important issues of adolescent English learners subjectivities, the pluralistic socialcultural con- texts of learning English, and the potential for transformative learning afforded by the use of multiliteracies/multimodality perspective to complement critical ideological pedagogy, particularly in the world where public communication texts are becoming increasingly multimodal. Weedon (1997) defines subjectivity as the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relations to the world (p. 32). With this construct, ESL pedagogy becomes a site of struggle over what to teach and how to teach. This is why critical theorists are faced with the task of designing pedagogical practices that encourage ESL students to challenge linguistic rules of use that limit learners possibilities for full and equitable social and cultural participation (New London Group, 1996; Norton, 2000). The pioneering research of Knobel and Lankshear (2007), the New London Group (1996), and Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) in new literacies strongly suggests that the pedagogy of multiliteracies/multimodality can be used as a tool to facilitate transformative goals in meaning-making classrooms for English language learners. This is because this pedagogy conceptualizes literacy practices MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 209 as multiple and diverse across cultures and contexts (Kress & Street, 2006). The enormous possibilities afforded by multimodal resources to promote transformative instructional practices in ESL classrooms are further explicated below. MEANING MAKING, SEMIOTIC RESOURCES, AND TRANSFORMATIVE GOALS The confluence of events such as increasing multilingual and multicultural school settings and advancement in technologies of communications has resulted in a plurality of textual forms; consequently, language learning and literacy must account for the different contexts of language use, multiplicity of discourses, the possibilities for designed meaning, and possible multiple readings and interpreta- tions of a text (Corbett, 2003; Jewitt, 2005; New London Group, 1996). By text, I mean different genres such as reports, newspapers, pictures, songs, manuals, textbooks, narratives, procedures, legal documents, spoken or written words, and the different text types associated with electronic multimedia. These diverse text types are characteristically produced by different cultures and thus lend themselves to intercultural and cross-social interpretations (New London Group, 1996). Jewitt contends that the relationship between image, language, spatiality, and typography associated with burgeoning diverse text-typesafforded by new multimedia technologieschanges both the shape of knowledge and the practices of language and literacy learning. These transformations are producing far-reaching implications in the kinds of literacy practices that English language learners need to acquire to become productive citizens. Kress and Street (2006) summarize the fundamental questions for teachers and students in these shifting times: How do they (new media, modes and messages) interact, what becomes possible for whom, where is power likely to shift, who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose, and what is our role as academics in all that? (p. ix). Following Luke (1996), power is used in this study to refer to the enhanced action with influence and effect (p. 313) on what constitutes not only knowledge but also the pedagogy employed to achieve it in ESL classroom settings. To address at least some of these important questions, Gee (2000, 2001, 2003, 2007) proposes a new view of literacy and language learning as social achieve- ments ingrained in social practices: Knowing about social practice always involves recognizing various distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, knowing, and using various objects and technologies that constitute the social practice (Gee, 2003, p. 15). Gee suggests that literacy practices are essentially social activities conducted during social interactions, and that the social practices around how texts are analyzed, decoded, negotiated, and interpreted by both teachers and students help situate meanings of specific words 210 AJAYI within individuals embodied experiences and perspectives. Gee concludes that meaning making involves learning how to situate (build) meanings (Gee, 2003, p. 26) in different domains, be they videogames, computers, movies, television, visual images, literature, and so on. In these domains, authors increasingly deploy the resources of language, image, spatiality, and digitality interactively and independently to compose diverse text types and thus textually position readers (Jewitt, 2005; Unsworth, 2001/2004). Therefore, in everyday communication, the choice of multimodal modes of communication becomes the most salient issue. Kress (2000d) reflects on the growing impact of this trend: It is now impossible to make sense of texts, even of their linguistic parts alone, without having a clear idea of what these other features might be contributing to the meaning of a text. In fact, it is now no longer possible to understand language and its uses without understanding the effect of all modes of communication that are copresent in any text (p. 337). This is particularly true in mass media and textbook designs, where meaning making increasingly relies on a variety of multimodal resources in such a way that language interfaces with visual, audio, spatial, performative, and gestural aspects (New London Group, 1996). What this means is that in some contexts, such as science textbooks, computer applications, movies, video games, and so forth, the social and material affordances of multimodality, such as sounds, music, images, movement, and light effects, have led to a reconfiguration of different modes and media in ways that certain information becomes more effective and efficient in the visual rather than the verbal mode (Gee, 2003, 2007; Jewitt, 2005; Kress, 2000c). There are some reasons for this. First, in multimodal texts, language and images can be deployed independently and interactively in a way that visual images communicate something different from languageor the two modes (linguistic and visual) can combine to produce a meaning that neither conveys separately (Gee, 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Unsworth, 2001/2004). For example, images in some public communications carry meanings that are independent of language in such texts. This means that people who are not visually literate may not be able decode such meanings. Second, different domainsvideos, textbooks, billboards, newspapers, comics, rap songs, and so forthrequire different kinds of literacy skills to access information. This suggests that in some domains, lan- guage may be appropriate and sufficient, whereas in others, visual images may be adequate; however, in some contexts, a combination of different modes may be necessary to convey a message and make meaning. In view of the multiple, complex, and shifting demands of language learning and meaning-making skills as new media develop and infiltrate public communi- cations, there is a need to challenge English-language pedagogy to explore how MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 211 the affordances, the materiality and the provenance of modes and signs (Kress & Street, 2006, p. viii) relate to everyday social practices of language learners across cultures and contexts. In particular, there is an urgent need to explore how semiotics offers English language learners alternative ways of perceiving and conceptualizing their worlds, how the design of modes offers potential multiple entry points into a text, how learners use multimodal resources to convey multi- ple meanings, and what students can do with the resources of diverse types of narrative afforded them by multimodal resources (Jewitt, 2005). Happily, Stein (2004) demonstrates how English language learners from certain communities in South Africa value oral, performative, and gestural forms of communication above print-based texts. Stein reports that through writing, verbal modes, role-play, and photography, the students not only use visual representations to provide details that are absent in the written mode but also examine their social realities, convey different social identities and experience their worlds in new ways because of classroom social practices centered on the use of multimodal resources. This kind of transformative approach that links classroom learning activities with students identity/subjectivity requires a theoretical framework, as put forward below. MEANING MAKING: A THEORETICAL GROUNDING Freire (2000) contends that authentic education, as the practice of freedom, should seek to develop learners ability to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves . . . [and] see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation (p. 83). Applying this perspective to language learning, I define meaning making as a process by which learners gain critical consciousness of the interpretation of events in their lives in relation to the world around them. In this way, the meaning that individual learners arrive at after reading a story or watching a video is mediated by their social, cultural, and historical experiences. Thus the term meaning has two constitutive elementsreflection and action (Freire, 2000). The learner, after reflection, chooses the meaning that represents his or her perspective out of the possibilities afforded by the society. In many instances, when students engage in the process of representing their interests, they transform existing settled and taken-for-granted meanings. If this theoretical assumption is accepted, then meaning-making practices should seek to create a framework that develops in learners the capacity for criti- cal consciousness and transformation (Auerbach, 1995, 1996, 2000; Freire, 2000) as students struggle to understand the social contexts of their lives and grapple with the transformation of their social reality and the world in which they live. Therefore, Paulo Freires theoretical conceptualization of problem-posing and 212 AJAYI dialogical relations sets the pedagogical goal of posing problems in the contexts of learners lives in relation with the sociopolitical conditions that shape their experiences. The underlying assumption here is that when students are encouraged to dialogue, engage, and challenge conditions that perpetuate inequalities in the contexts of their lives, they become increasingly critical, gain new understandings of their social realities, liberate their creative energies, and thus propel themselves to act as a catalyst for social change and, in the process, acquire true knowledge (Freire, 2000). In practical terms, the teachers role is therefore to critically engage learners as co-investigators as the teacher and students jointly create the learning conditions that help learners to develop and realize their interests, needs, expectations, and priorities. In what appears to be classroom applications of Freire theory, Auerbach (1995, 1996) and Kumaravadivelu (1999) suggest an issue-oriented (issue- centered) approach to language learning. In a more recent work, Auerbach (2000)whose conceptual framework for second-language teaching is strongly influenced by Freireargues for a participatory pedagogy, where learners are empowered through teaching strategies that put their experiences and knowledge at the center of the pedagogical process (p. 146). In other words, the issues and concerns in the contexts of learners lives become the motor force of instruction (Auerbach, 1996, p. 81) for meaning-making activities in the language-learning classroom. With this broad definition, meaning-making practices become a critical tool of connecting the sociocul- tural contexts of learners lives to the community and the broader society. More significantly, the ESL teacher becomes an agent of social changesno longer a neutral transmitter of knowledge (Freire, 2000) but a transformerwho develops a framework for finding issues related to students lives and develops meaning-making activities around them with the ultimate aim of effecting change through the transformation of social and institutional structures in the broader society (Auerbach, 1995). Specifically, the teacher engages in shared authority by researching and presenting learners realities in problematized form (Auerbach, 1995). Auerbach aptly sums it up: the teacher poses problems and engages students in dialogue and critical reflection (p. 12) as the students and teacher collabo- ratively construct knowledge in the classroom. Hence teachers theory and practice should necessarily provide students the opportunity for the explora- tion of their own social and cultural world. Auerbach (2000) identifies specific principles that should guide learning activities, including instructional practices that focus on learners needs and concerns, the use of themes/ activities that validate learners experiences, the teachers emphasis on critical understanding and exploration of alternative views, practices that contextualize acquisition of skills and knowledge, and teaching processes that are dialogical and collaborative. MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 213 THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE STUDY The campaign to ban undocumented immigrants from having drivers licenses became part of the national political discourse after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The fiercely contested mayoral election in Los Angeles County in 2005 put the issue at the center of political campaign and thus became a subject of interest among immigrants. This is hardly surprising because an estimated 8 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, and it is speculated that 4 million of them live in California, with about half of this figure living in and around Los Angeles. In 2003, Gray Davis, former governor of the state, signed into law a bill that allowed undocumented immigrants to have drivers licenses, but this was quickly repealed after he was removed from office. In 2004, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed another bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to have drivers licenses. The latest effort at solving the problem of illegal immigrationthe Minuteman Projectcame from volunteers (some called them vigilantes) who were convinced that both the federal and state governments had failed to stem the current rate of invasion [of] the United States (The Minuteman Project, http:// www.usbc.org/minuteman1.html) by illegal immigrants. The group expressed the fear that by 2025, illegal aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the U. S. (The Minute Man Project, p. 1). The situation is com- pounded by the fear that illegal aliens will wield enormous influence in shaping the American political and social landscapes in the nearest future, even more than the Constitution and the existing Euro-centric definition of culture. Conse- quently, the group periodically patrols the border states in an effort to apprehend illegal immigrants crossing into the United States. In the past 6 years, because of the politics of drivers licenses, the issue of immigration control has become a divisive onepitting Mexican immigrants against White conservative Republicans. Consequently, alien immigrants have become pawns in the hands of politicians of both the Republican and Democratic parties. As a vote-getting issue, the two parties, at election cycles, always make political promises, including the issues of drivers licenses for illegal aliens and the guest-worker programan arrangement to give a temporary legal status to illegal aliens to work in the United States. This was a difficult time in the lives of illegal immigrants for a variety of reasons, including the 9/11 attacks (and the consequent suspicion of immigrants) and the post 9/11 immigration laws that allow illegal immigrants to be jailed and later deported to their native countries without judicial interventions. Thus the drivers license issue is not only topical but also consequential in terms of its direct impact on the lives of students who may be, or whose parents may be, undocumented immigrants. For example, commuting to and from the school and 214 AJAYI visiting places of interest can be problematic, particularly with the chaotic public transportation system in Los Angeles. Furthermore, this issue impacts the ability of parents to secure better-paying jobs where personal transportation is required. This means the parents ability to earn enough money to support their children may be adversely affected. Thus, undoubtedly, the issue of drivers licenses and the attendant consequences constitute a contextual factor (Auerbach, 1996) that directly shapes learners lives, with ripple effects on their efforts to learn the English language. THE RESEARCH Site of the Study The school had a student population of 4,839 in 20042005 (http:// www.lausd.demographics). In an extensive report on the school, the Los Angeles Times (July 14, 2002) wrote that the school was beset with a myriad of problems, including dismal test scores, overwhelming truancy, high dropout rates (as more than two thirds of 9th-graders drop out before reaching the 12th grade), and widespread illiteracy. According to the ESL coordinator and available records on the school Web site, it appeared that the school did not keep records of the students literacy levels in the Spanish language. In addition, the newspaper noted that about 80% of the almost exclusively Black and Latino student population came from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. School Language Policy Of the school population, 2,193 students (45.31%) were classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP). All of the LEP students are placed in the Basic Bilingual Program. In the program, teachers use Spanish as a medium of instruction for grade-level academic subjects like Math and Science while the students are learning English. Students attend a double period of 116 min of Englishlanguage development lessons daily. As students become more proficient in the language, English instruction is increased to teach the different school subjects. The program is in three levels: Beginning ESL 1A&B, Intermediate ESL 2A&B, and Advanced ESL 3&4. At the completion of the program, those who pass the California English Language Development Test are redesignated into the mainstream English classes. Advanced ESL 3 Program The students at this level have completed the Beginning and Intermediate levels over a period of at least four semesters. The students have gained some degree of proficiency in the language. The syllabus requires them to learn grade-level MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 215 language arts in English. The curriculum is organized around themes that are of interest to learners, such as personal expression, discoveries, conflict and resolution, choices and triumphs (Schifini, Short, & Tinajero, 1998). Furthermore, the curriculum exposes the students to a range of linguistic skills that English learn- ers need to acquire in the areas of Language Development and Communication (language functions and language patterns and structures), Concepts and Vocabulary, Reading (reading strategies and comprehension), and Literary Analysis and Appreciation. Other areas include Speaking, Listening, Viewing, Reporting, Cognitive Academic Skills (learning strategies, critical thinking, and research skills), and Writing (process, grammar, usage, mechanics, spelling). However, the analysis of the school language policy and ESL program seems to suggest that it does not promote the social use of English language in ways that learners can connect to their own perspectives and social identities. It appears that a better approach would have been to design the curriculum around aspects of the students realities as a basis for constructing a participatory learning community (Auerbach, 1995, 2000). The goal of the policy and program should have been to help students understand how the English language produces and reproduces inequitable social relations and how they can make critical interpreta- tions of their realities and proffer possible alternatives (Auerbach, 1995, 2000; Pennycook, 2000). Selection of Subjects After I discussed this research with the schools ESL program coordinator, she assigned an existing class of the Advanced ESL 3 program to the project to avoid any of the disruptions that pulling students from different classes might have caused. In all, 33 students18 males and 15 femalesparticipated in the research. Of these, 22 were in ninth grade, 8 were in tenth grade, and 3 were in eleventh grade. Although the primary language of the students was Spanish, in their responses to my preteaching survey of biographical information, seven of them indicated that they were American citizens, whereas the remaining 26 indi- cated that they came from different countries in Latin America. The immigrants also indicated that they had been learning English for a period of 2 to 5 years. The lesson covered a block schedule of 116 min. Grouping and Seating Arrangement As this was not my class, I worked with the class teacher to divide the students into three mixed groups, each consisting of 11 students, although, as part of my project, I taught this class twice a week for 3 weeks prior to this study. The purpose of this was in part to get to know the students (i.e., their names, their English-language level, the seating arrangement, etc.) and establish a relationship with them. In addition, I had earlier in my teaching career taught ESL in the 216 AJAYI school for 4 years before I moved to teach at the university. However, because of my limited relationship with the students, I collaborated with the class teacher to draw up a seating arrangement. The class teacher and I agreed on three criteria students achievement scores in the previous semester ESL examination, gender, and history of learning/using English to divide them into three groups of 11 stu- dents per group. The students sat in rows, in part because the class had only long tables and chairs that allowed students in each group to sit and face each other while working. I also wanted the students to work in large groups so that they could generate and discuss more ideas. The Text I supplied photocopies of a newspaper report GOP Congressman Renews Push for Immigration Curbs (Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2005, p. 13). Essen- tially, the text was a report of legislation introduced by a congressman to ban ille- gal aliens from having drivers licenses, to tighten requirements for political asylum, and to complete the border fence between California and Mexico. The congressman was reported to have argued that the provisions of the legislation would prevent 9/11-type attacks by Al Qaeda groups. The article referenced the guest-worker programan idea floated by then-governor of Texas, George W. Bush (now president) during the 2000 presidential election to allow illegal aliens to apply for temporary legal status in the United States. The viewpoints of the advocates of the program and those opposing it were reported. Lesson Presentation Pre-lesson activities. To activate and/or build the students background knowledge, I posted four large photographs on the wall (e.g., see Figure 1). Then I instructed the students to walk to the photographs, look at them, read the captions, and jot down specific ideas they observed. Their worksheets indicated they noted the big walls, three men, large roads, beautiful homes, desert, and cars, among others. Then, I posted four questions on the overhead projector for quick-write and quick-share activities: (a) What do you learn from this photograph? (b) What is the importance of the large wall? (c) Who are the men in the picture and what are they doing? (d) How will you relate this picture to your life? As students worked on the assignment and later shared their answers in groups, I went around the groups to explain the assignment, guide the groups by providing corrections and prompts and ensuring that each group stayed focused. After the quick-share, I played a video clip of a campaign rally where a politician addressed the topic of illegal aliens and drivers licenses. I periodically stopped it to allow for comments, questions, and perspectives from the students. Next, I led a whole-class discussion of the topic of illegal aliens and drivers licenses. MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 217 Students brainstormed the bad and good sides of the legislation, and I charted their points on the whiteboard. I read aloud to the class the first paragraph of the article GOP Congressman Renews Push to model appropriate reading behavior for the class. The class read the remaining paragraphs by using the popcorn reading technique (Herrell & Jordan, 2004); that is, a student read aloud a paragraph and then called on another student to read the next paragraph. In this way, I was able to encourage all students to pay attention to whoever was reading. Also, when the students could not pronounce a word, or did so wrongly, I asked for volunteers to pronounce these lexical items. In addition, I also modeled the pronunciation for the class. While the students read the text aloud, I compiled a list of lexical items the students could not pronounce at all and those they had a hard time pronouncing in my observation record. Then I asked some students to identify specific difficult vocabulary and phrases in the storyvocabulary items they could neither pronounce nor understand the meanings of. The words were then charted on the board: permanent status, temporary status, guest-worker program, undoc- umented immigrants, illegal aliens, and political asylum. Others were amnesty, FIGURE 1 The MexicoUnited States border fence. Note. Image by Zuma Press, from Todays Immigrants, by Karen Fanning, 2005, Junior Scholastic, 107(15), p. 7. Copyright 2005 by Trish Murphey, Zuma Press, Inc. Reprinted with permission. 218 AJAYI opposition, advocacy, legislation, legalization, reform, overhaul, immigration, and anti-immigration. I had earlier recorded some of the words as difficult lexical items during my preteaching preparation for the lesson. The words were therefore adopted for the vocabulary exercise for the study. Initial definitions. I asked the students to work in their groups to write the meanings of the vocabularies and phrases posted on the whiteboard by explaining and/or defining them. I encouraged them to make inferences (i.e., use the context of the story they were reading) for the words they did not understand the meanings of. Meaning-making exploratory activities. I explained the procedure for the activities. First, each group would work on only one of the activities at any given time and each group must complete at least two activities. Second, I encouraged each group to spend an average of 30 min on each activity. Finally, I asked the students to hand in their work for grading so that the papers would be returned to them at the end of the lesson. I also sought and obtained the permission of the class teacher and the students to use two of their drawings for the sole purpose of researching more effective ways of teaching English as a second language. The procedure was summarized in a bulletin form, and each student was provided a copy and another was posted on the board. Then I explained the following three group activities: 1. Meaning inference activity: I asked all students to reread the text GOP Congressman Renews Push and highlight the lexical items on the overhead projector. Furthermore, I explained to the students the need to use contextual clues, brainstorming, and group discussions to negotiate the meanings of the words and to write them on their worksheets. In particular, I encouraged the students to explore the meanings of the vocabulary and phrases as used in the day-to-day contexts of their own lives. I suggested that the students could provide multiple meanings. 2. Campaign advertisement activity: I asked the students to pretend that their work would be posted on a large billboard within the school. I explained that they had to draw a visual image and create a slogan (a written text) to accompany the image. Also, their drawings and written message together must represent their understanding of the meaning of the newspaper story. I posted the list of vocabulary the students could choose from on the whiteboard. I guided the students in exploring differ- ent themes and images they considered appropriate for the assignment. I also encouraged them to consider the kind of visuals viewers would consider appropriate for the theme or context of the study. 3. Cartoon strip activity: I explained to the students that they needed to use the vocabulary items on the overhead projector to recreate the political MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 219 narrative (GOP Renews Push) in a cartoon strip of three or four scenes. The narrative should include such features as story plot, characterization, sketches/drawings, caption, and so on. The salient points of the three activities were summarized and made available to the students in a bulleted form. Next I asked a few questions to check the students understanding of the class assignment. I also took a few questions from the students. I called on two studentsone to explain the class assignment and the other to explain the procedure. This is important not only to ensure that the students understand what to do but also to make sure that they reduced the assignment into their own language. Then I gave each group three min to decide which activity to handle first. Group 3 first indicated to me they were ready to start with the meaning inference activity. I joined the group to provide some prompts and clarifications. Meaning Construction: From Text Reading to Definition Writing Group 3: I asked the group to reread the text and highlight the vocabularies and phrases from the overhead projector on their copies. The students used their ini- tial definitions as a basis for the meaning inference activity. However, to do the activity successfully, I gave the students some prompts on how to talk about meanings, that is how to negotiate meanings of the words and phrases to arrive at meanings that would be acceptable to the group as reflective of what they intended to say. The group started with Marias initial definition of the phrases: Permanent status: Permanent as something that cannot move or something that will never take off. Temporary status: Temporary status is something that will take off and go away. Guest-worker program: Some one that work. I then encouraged the students to consider whether the meanings were related to the story the class read. Yasmin presented her definitions for the following phrases: Permanent status: Is when you have the permission to stay in our country. Temporary status: Is when you can stay in our country for only a temporary time. Guest-worker program: Is the program when state bring workers from another place. In the case of Laura, she neither defined nor guessed the meanings of permanent status and guest-worker. She attempted only one definition, as follows: Temporary status: When somebody live in a country not belonging to her. Clearly, these students differed in their definitions of these phrases. I called their attention to the differences. Whereas Marias definitions seemed to be vague or 220 AJAYI abstract and unreflective of the text, Yasmin was successful in relating the defini- tions to the social and political context of the text. For instance, her definitions were intimately linked to her identity as an American, as she defined the phrases in terms of staying or not staying in our country. However, the students were still in the process of negotiating the right words that would reflect the meanings in the text and at the same time reflect their own social, cultural, and political understanding of the words. I noticed that the students efforts to do this were constrained by their limited English language speaking and writing resources. Frequently, the students had difficulties translating their ideas into English, and this further constrained their ability to explore the meanings of the words and phrases. I suggested that the students reread the sentences in which the words and phrases were found and think of the ways the lexical items were used in and outside the classroom, including the campaign video they watched. The group continued with the activity, while I moved on to work with the group that asked for assistance. From Written Text to Visual Text Group 2: I briefly reviewed their initial definitions with the group and they differed in their definitions of the words. I explained what they needed to do, for example, iden- tify and agree on specific lexical items they could work with to create the text of the political ad and also to identify and agree on what the drawingthe visual compo- nent of the adwould represent. The group agreed to use the following lexical items and phrases: undocumented worker, immigration, anti-immigration, guest-worker, and legal. Also, they eventually agreed on drawing a patrol officer chasing people trying to cross to the United States as in Figure 2: The layout of the image along a horizontal axis is important for meaning. The image of a patrol officer on a horse chasing a group of people was placed at the FIGURE 2 Sample of students advertisements. Reprinted with permission. MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 221 left-hand side and thus readers could take the image as given or information that they are familiar with. The shocking image of human beings in stampede was placed on the right-hand side as constitutive of newthe information that viewers need to pay attention to as the issue or concern of the students. Further- more, the point of view is frontal, suggesting what you see here is part of our world, something we are involved with (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). There is no eye contact between the patrol officer and the immigrants, nor between the people in the drawing and the viewers. This suggests that there is no contact or relationship between the officer and the immigrants. Also, the setting of the drawing is de-emphasized, that is, devoid of any details that could distract the attention of viewers. In this way, the authors succeeded in ensuring that viewers focus their attention primarily on the participants in the image. The group then worked to produce the written text to accompany the visual. Alma and Karina produced the first draft of the slogan: polis arrest a bounch of immigrants that move to another country to work but dosent sopost to be in the country. I encouraged the group to critique the draft of the slogan, calling their attention to the fact that the slogan didnt include the vocabulary they needed to use in the ad. They discarded it. Hector started a new ad with the contribution of others: We Mexicans migration to America because they get better jobs but anti-immigration people jail them because they are undocumented workers. What the students produced here is an example of the multimodal approach to meaning making. The students applied composite visuals or multimodal text (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), texts in which meanings are realized through the integration of a combination of multiple semiotic codesvisuals and written modes. Taken together, the visual and written media in Figure 2 present a meaning that reflects the learners lived experience. The image of the pursuer and the pursued thus offers deeper understanding of the sociopolitical interpretations of the newspaper story. The students critical understanding (Auerbach, 2000) of the story seems to be as a result of the teaching practice that relates pedagogical processes to the learners lives. Auerbach (1995, 2000) contends that students learn when instructional practices problematize the representation of their reality and give them a voice to present such experience. To me, the most important issue here is the fact that the students recreation of the text from written medium to visual opened up new possibilities for wider interpretations of the vocabularies. Their visual representation showed a border patrol (some called it the Minutemen) official pursuing a group of people in a stampede. I suggested a need to enhance the relation of the factual details in the text with their own visual creation. For example, I was curious as to why the boarder patrol officer looked Hispanic rather than White. Melinda explained that she had never seen an American border patrol officer and that it was easier to draw a Mexican border patrol officer from her experience in her native country. The students explanation is an example of what Said (1994) describes as 222 AJAYI cultural generalization (or cultural common-dare), that is, a culturally sanctioned practice by which monocultural people deploy their own familiar cultural attributes to explain other people without disrupting common sense. Here the student projected her culture (what she was familiar with) to explain a new culture (what she was not familiar with.) This shows that learning does not take place in a vacuum but in the context of learners social and cultural background experiences and perspectives. Figure 2 demonstrates that the students action (drawing) is not just creative and innovative, but also transformativethis is in the sense that the visual extends the range of meaning possibilities in the newspaper story. When I asked why the group drew a horse rather than a patrol jeep, the students explained that a horse was more appropriate to chase people in the desert than a patrol car. Similarly, the drawing of people in stampede was an obvious reference to the plight of illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States. Although the original text did not contain these details, the students reflected them in the drawing. Here again, the students used the visual images as the predominant representational media to convey their understanding of the message of the text they read. To me, this is an indication of a critical understanding of the story. To the students, meaning making is not abstract and independent of the social reality of their world but involves a conscious and reflective processing of information. In fact, their work suggests that meaning making is affective and constitutive of learners subjectivities (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). This is what Freire (2000) calls know[ing] the text and context . . . [and] . . . be[ing] critical (p. 11). I moved on to work with Group 1. An Exploration of Semiotic Possibilities Group 1 had completed the meaning inference activity and was beginning to work on the cartoon strip activity by the time I joined them. I briefly reviewed the first activity with them. Then I encouraged the students to select specific lexical items they would use in the story (immigrants, anti-immigrants, illegal, undocumented workers, reform). Next I worked with the students to develop a story line from the original text. Scene 1 provided comparative perceptions of a spatial view of the United States and Mexico, scene 2 showed the border patrol officers chasing sus- pects, scene 3 showed immigrants in the streets of America, and scene 4 showed an immigrant in jail for driving without a drivers license, as in Figure 3. The students used a combination of horizontal and vertical structuring to give pictorial meaning to the story we read in the class. In Figure 3, the top left-hand frame is the given, the depiction of the promise of a good life in America, and the second top framethe arrest of illegal immigrantsis the new. But the upheaval brought by the Minuteman Project and the consequent imprison- ment of illegal aliens produced a new opposition between the ideal of life in MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 223 America and the real in terms of jail sentences for illegal aliens. The given shows big buildings, cars, and expansive roads that immigrants would like to be part of. This is the promise or dream with the emotive appealthe sense of what life might be (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996)that lures aliens to America. At the bottom of the frame are two images that constitute the real. The left bottom drawing shows the image of immigrants who seemed to be at a loss, and the right bottom drawing shows a pathetic image of another immigrant in jail. Thus the images at the bottom depict the more realistic and practical life of illegal aliens. Hence viewers can easily see the contrast, in fact the opposition, between the top and bottom frames. Furthermore, the contextual meaningthe opposition between the elements of meaning (the dream life of America and imprisonment)was depicted through visual syntax. To achieve this contrast, the writers drew a sharp line to separate the top from the bottom. More important, the man in jail looks directly at viewers to establish an imaginary relationship (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) with them and therefore gain their sympathy. Auerbach (2000) theorizes that when instructional processes draw on the social context of learners lives, that is, the concrete experiences of their lives, learning becomes meaningful. It is in this context that the shared background knowledge of the students (i.e., watching arrests of immigrants on TV, the on-going upheaval caused by the Minuteman Project in their community, and the FIGURE 3 Students cartoon strip. Reprinted with Permission. 224 AJAYI fact that many of the students were new immigrants, according to the preteaching survey) became critical in extending their understanding of the text and the con- sequent meanings attributed to the vocabulary and phrases in the newspaper story. Freire (2000) contends that when people develop the ability to perceive critically the world in which they live, they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation (p. 83). Next, the students worked to produce a written text to accompany the visual. Scene 1 depicted the opulence of life in America (note the buildings and cars) against the desert of the Mexican border of the fence. The students wrote Immi- grant go to America to find America dream for them and their family. In scene 2, the students wrote Anti-immigrant was trying to get the 4 people because it was illegal immigrants. In scene 3, they wrote Undocumented workers in Los Angeles because they want jobs to feed their family. In scene 4 the character became a crusader against the immigration law: give us driver license, we do not come to jail. Reform your law. Through the visual mode, the contextual understanding of the lexical items that seemed out of reach to the students because of the limitations in English became achievable. Through visual images the students brought to the fore the plight of illegal immigrants. Here the comic strip empowers the students not only to show their concern in the current social discourse about immigration in the broader social context and take a critical look at their social condition as immi- grants in America but also extend their understanding of the meaning of the story they read. For example, the original story included neither the notion of the police chasing illegal aliens nor the idea of jail terms for aliens who drove without a drivers license. The students took advantage of visual semiotics to express much more emotion and experience than they otherwise might be able to express in standard English. Thus, the comic strip provides a cover to partici- pate in the social transformation of their society. This is what Freire (2000) calls the liberating and transforming power of an authentic educationan education that evokes a critical reflection and a critical consideration of reality as learners examine and formulate their relations with others as mediated by the world around them. For example, in scene 3, undocumented, was defined as people who came to the United States in search of jobs to feed their families, rather than as people who have broken the law and should be sent to jail. The Final Definitions After completion of the group activities, I instructed the students to write the final definitions of the words and phrases on the overhead projector (the same lexical items we were working on). As I moved within the groups during the final assignment, two observations were apparent. First, all of the students wrote some sort of definitions or explanations, unlike the pretreatment stage (initial MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 225 definition), when many students skipped several of the vocabulary items. Second, I noticed a significant shift between the pretreatment and posttreatment word meanings that the students wrote. It appeared that the teacherstudent and studentstudent dialogue, the multimodal meaning representations, and the mul- tiple learning activities gave the students the impetus to extend the meanings attributed to the vocabularies and phrases in the original text. In significant ways, the definitions shifted from the initial general or abstract definitions to entail an inclusion of the students social experiences as mediated by the sociopolitical reality in the broader society. The students became liberated to impose their sociopolitical realities and voices in their meanings. Here are some examples by the students: Yasmin Permanent status: When the foreigner have the green card or right to stay in America. Guest-worker program: Is the how millions of undocumented Hispanic worker to apply for temporary legal status. Undocumented worker: Hispanic workers that dont have legal document to work in America. Reyna Undocumented worker: Mexican who works in America and does not have per- mission to stay and work. Immigration: To move from you own place in Mexico to stay in America. Hector Legal: When you do something that the government felt that you is right. Karina Anti-immigration: Some people that dosent like immigrant from Hispanic to stay in America. Alma Guest-worker program is a program that give some rights to undocumented per- son to live in America. SOME OBSERVATIONS The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, this study dem- onstrates that multiplicity of learning activities is an important mediating factor in ESL meaning-making lessons, as such activities provide the necessary opportu- nity for students to enter into a dialogue and collaboration. This observation is 226 AJAYI consistent with the New London Groups (1996) conclusion that when students learn in the context of a multiplicity of learning activities and approaches, they gain in metacognition and metalinguistic skills and also enhance their ability to critically reflect on complex systems and their interactions. Also, the students in this study constructed word meanings that reflected the sociopolitical realities of their own world. In other words, the students became active designers of mean- ing (New London Group, 1996, p. 65). In addition, English learners benefit more when instructional content relates directly to the social conditions of their lives and when pedagogical practices encourage them to engage in a critical understanding of their social contexts. This is what Freire (2000) calls liberating education, specifically a learning situation that makes students look at the social context of their lives so that they understand more clearly who they are as they work to build a better future. Furthermore, a multimodal approach is critical in ESL classrooms, as it affords students the opportunity to tap into the different semiotic possibilities for meaning making and communication. Lastly, the teachers role is critical in pedagogical practices that emphasize a critical under- standing as all members of the classroom work together (through dialogue and collaboration) to create knowledge. Freire rightly argues that the teachers role is to create, together with students, the necessary conditions for constructing true knowledge. THE WAY FORWARD I set out to examine how meaning-making processes in an ESL classroom can explore multiple learning activities and multimodal practice in the context of the social conditions that shape students experiences. Auerbach (2000) eloquently argues that learning possibilities in the classroom are mediated by factors in broader society and that these factors should be taken into account when designing instructional practices for students. As I have demonstrated in this study, it is critically important that teachers become familiar with issues of concern in the lives of their students. The role of the teacher in the classroom is therefore to investigate and present learners realities in a problematized form (Auerbach, 1995; Freire, 2000). In other words, teachers must keep asking the very important question: how do we make the pedagogical processes relevant to the learning needs of our students and validate their social background experiences? One important step toward this is that both the teacher and the students learn to work collaboratively to discover the connection between classroom learning and the broader social and political contexts of learning. This is what Shor and Freire (1987) describe as critical pedagogy, that is, the integration of the students and the teachers into a mutual creation and re-creation of knowledge MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 227 (p. 8). This process involves teachers exploration and analysis of the issues and concerns that are constitutive of the context of learners lives. I concur with Auerbachs (1995) argument that students should be active participants in deciding what to explore and how to explore it in the process of creating their own knowledge and the application of such knowledge. The involvement of stu- dents in dialogue and critical reflection offers the classroom as a spacea con- textfor learners to analyze their reality and participate in its transformation (Auerbach, 1995). This is why Shor and Freire (1987) called for academic knowledge that absorbs students subjective positions. When teachers engage in critical pedagogies, not only will classroom processes be designed for the future needs of students, but the process will also see individual learners as trans- formers, creators, and innovators with the capability to shape the cultural, social, and political contexts of their lives. As subjects of constant social, political, cultural, and historical changes, teachers may have to learn to adjust to social changes. Part of the social change of our times involves literacy practice that enables learners to integrate multimodality, in particular visual semiotics, with meaning-making practice in the classroom. Meaning-making activities engage students in creative literacy exploration of multimodal texts such as cartoon strips, comic books, photographs, computer graphics, drawings, and so on. Finally, it is high time that educators, researchers, and theorists develop Englishlanguage learning curricula that recognize the diverse forms, the many sites, and the multiple purposes of meaning making and communication, and present these variables in the social and cultural context of learners lives, link them to the broader societal needs, and show them as the effects of the agentive, creative, transformative, designing action of individuals communicat- ing in their social lives (Kress, 2000a p. 142). Such theories and classroom practices should therefore seek to develop in teachers and students an analytical metalanguagea language for talking about language, images, texts, and meaning-making interactions (New London Group, 1996, p. 77). In essence, the development of the tool kit should seek to advance the potential of indi- vidual learners to identify and analyze the multimodal properties of different text-types. In addition, they need to learn how to relate the common characteris- tics and unique features of the different semiotic modes across different textual forms and diverse social and cultural contexts where they seem to function effectively. The notion of design (New London Group, 1996) is therefore critical to meaning-making theorypractice dynamics that seek not only to integrate learners actions and reflections (Freire, 2000) and available semiotic signs, but also to make available to them the potential that allows individuals to shape, create, and transform meaning. 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Short Paper 3_Veasna chann
We all know that understanding a language involves not only knowledge of grammar, phonology and lexis but also a certain features and characteristics of the culture and society. Since language teaching has been influenced by society, Sociolinguistic study can provide insights related to other important aspects of the learning experiences of bilingual students, such as how language relates to their identity, affective experiences, and relationships (Gaerlan & Bernardo, n.d.). With regard to these aspects, Llamas and Stockwell (2002) claim, “teachers who are aware of the sociolinguistic context had insights at their disposal which can make them better teachers.”
According to the usefulness of sociolinguistic awareness mentioned above, it is very important for teachers to explore its factors that influence on language teaching. Obviously, one of the examples of parents’ influence that teachers should be aware of is that all parents are anxious and willing t
A Comparative Study of Intelligence in Children of Consanguineous and Non-Consanguineous Marriages and Its Relationship With Holland's Personality Types in High School Students of Tehran