Digital Humanities and Multimodal Composition in ESL Classrooms: A Perspective from Pakistan

Adeel Khalid

Forman Christian College (A Chartered University), Lahore, Pakistan

Supervisor: Dr. Fauzia Janjua (Dean, FLL, IIUI)

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Introduction to the Study

• Inclusion of Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC) in English as a Second Language (ESL) – emerged as a new genre of practice in academic writing.
• The ESL writers have been reading and writing a wide selection of multimodal texts in the ESL context.
• With emerging technologies, these ESL academic writers have been engaged more than ever in producing complex multimodal texts.

Components of Digital Humanities

01

02

03

The term multimodality was introduced into the field of writing and composition studies with the seminal works of Kress (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006) and The New London Group (1996), and it refers to the ‘use of different semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event’ (Mills, 2015).

I argue that multimodality is a powerful lens to understand the complexity of how technologies impact how our students compose and make-meaning using multiple modes and its pedagogical and learning possibilities for ESL context.

Technologies to Consider for DMC Production�

Problem Statement

• Teaching academic writing have been a challenge in Pakistan and argumentative writing is a genre that is central to academic writing.
• This genre of writing has been emphasized with recent shifts in curriculum standards, such as the Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s policy for undergraduate studies and English Studies Curriculum. Writing taught as a stand-alone skill

Research Objectives

1. To examine learners' multimodal writing practices and perceptions of multimodal composition,
2. To investigate learners’ multimodal composition practices of the ways learners, enact ideas taught in writing class as digital affordances,
3. To document problems that arise when the learners are asked to compose outside the norm

Theoretical Underpinnings

Research Questions

1. How do the learners perceive DMC as the affordances of communicating with multiple modes in an ESL composition class?
2. What challenges do the learners face and view as constraints with multiple modes in an ESL composition class?

Significance of this Research

Informs instructors to reflect on their existing composition pedagogy

Rationale of the Study

Aims to get a deeper understanding of how a multiliteracies framework-based intervention, such as its design with digital, multimodal tools, affects student writing and how it may be used to strengthen students’ argument.

Focuses on the interaction between multimodality and one specific aspect of academic literacy – composing arguments.

Evaluation Procedures and Data Analysis

Iterative process of qualitative data analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Glaser et al., 1968).

Phase 1: open coding was used to create emergent categories from each of the learners' comments and interviews.

Phase 2: concentrated on improving the codes we first created and methodically creating connections between them.

Phase 3: to conduct selective coding.

Limitations

This study relies on a convenience sample from one class at one university; therefore, the findings cannot be generalized beyond the current context, and the participants’ experiences cannot fully account for the possible range of experiences in other settings and with other students.

Findings

• Conceptualising Through Multiple Modes
• Ingenious Meaning-Making Through Multiple Modes
• Contextualising Literature Through Multiple Modes
• Expression of Self through Multiple Modes
• Constraints in Composing

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Aspects of Digital Multimodal Composition

Personally relevant topics make students want to be understood.

A Way Forward

Viewing and visually representing are a part of our growing consciousness of how people gather and share information, we’d need to continue to extend our ways of communicating and our appreciation of the power of print and nonprint texts.

References

Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy? Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1, 20-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/950566.950595

Kress, G., & Leeuwen, T. van. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2n Ed). Routledge.

Mills, K. A. (2015). Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses (pp. 65–90). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783094639-008

Takayoshi, P., & Selfe, C. L. (2007). Thinking about multimodality. Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers, 1-12.

The New London Group. (2010). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u

Thank You