Producing and reading digital texts : patterns of communication in literacy classroom

• The presentation addresses the issues of homogeneity and heterogeneity in L1 research and education in early years of schooling, by focusing on how digital communication media changes patterns of communication as well as notions of ‘language’ and linguistic diversity in classrooms. Present day literacies involve more than reading and writing skills engaging students in multimodal meaning-making practices. Images, sound and writing appear in the same format and require abilities to understand and manage this great diversity of expressions, which in turn raises questions about pedagogies and assessment in literacy education. In the DILS project (Digital Arenas in Literacy Practices in Early Primary School) the literacies of reading, writing and textual competence are discussed by the presentation of situational choices and interpretation of semiotic resources by 7-9 year-old students in the context of three assignments: digital composing of a narrative story, a cross-border assignment on instructional texts and the reading of a webpage. Analysing these practices from a sociosemiotic standpoint (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996; Cope and Kalantzis, 2000), the result of the study shows that verbal (written) language is experienced as a strong resource, and that the students are not educated to use or interpret different resources complementary. Often the same information is mediated by different resources. However, the study reveals also examples of students with a not very developed verbal language, making use of other semiotic resources than written language to communicate. The consequences of digital communication in the classroom will therefore be discussed from a language developing perspective. We present also a model for multimodal text analysis, based on the students ́ semiotic choices and text- internal patterns, stressing communicative aspects between teachers and students working with multimodal texts in the classroom.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

digital media

literacy practices

multimodality

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)