The Language Teacher
July 2002
Developing Visual Literacy for the 21st Century
Terry Royce
Teachers College Columbia University
In the traditional L1 and L2 classroom, the focus has always been on language as the primary medium of communication. We speak to the students, they listen to us, they respond to our speech and we respond to theirs, they read what we give them to read, and they write (usually) about the subject matter that we have presented to them. Both L1 and L2 teachers have always been aware that in the classroom there are other ways (or modes) of communicating meaning, whether that be a content focus for a specific subject area, or a communication focus for the L2 teacher. For the L2 teacher specifically, the emphasis has always been on developing students' language (linguistic) competency, something that has usually been framed in terms of developing their communicative competence. Most language teachers would currently not take issue with that representation, since developing communicative competency is exactly what they are in the language classroom for--to facilitate their students' success in communicating in a foreign or second language.
This language-focused approach is currently under increasing pressure, however. The communicative methodologies and technologies deployed in the 20th century are now undergoing rapid and far-reaching changes, and many of the new forms of multimedia and electronic information sources are beginning to represent great and significant challenges to ways that communication is carried out in the classroom. The growth of newer forms of visual means of communication in the emerging 21st century culture of information-technology, and their increasing impact in the language classroom and in wider contexts is presenting new challenges to the thinking teacher. This cannot be ignored--virtually every conference, every new release of teaching materials (page-based or multimedia), and virtually every graduate teacher-training course is dealing in some way with the expansion of new technologies in teaching and learning, technologies which increasingly use language in combination with other ways of meaning-making. Yet, these technology or computer-based communication technologies are not necessarily replacing the traditional forms and formats (as in our page-based textbooks), but should be seen as complementing the existing teaching/learning resources.
The growth of these so-called new communication technologies in the worldwide web, in computer-assisted language learning software, and in distance learning technologies, is also placing increasing pressure on teachers. Many teachers want to work with or exploit these changes, but have little idea of where to start, or know how to translate these changes into effective classroom methodologies. When referring to communicative competence, teachers usually talk in terms of the four language skills. However, if they are to include new technologies in their classrooms, the concept of communicative competence needs to be re-conceptualized. One way to talk of communicative competence is in terms of multiple competencies or even multiliteracies (Unsworth, 2001). The use of competencies here is deliberate, since while competency in spoken and written language is something that all teachers aim for in their classes, there are also other competencies to consider, not in isolation, but in combination with the primary linguistic competency. Communication needs to be viewed in multimodal terms. The view taken here is not only that each mode of communication (linguistic, visual, and even movement and musical) can produce a certain set of meanings, but that different modes of meaning may be working in combination to produce a complex set of meanings (Royce, 1999b).
There is thus an emerging view of communicative competency in terms of a "plurality of literacies" (Unsworth, 2001), which takes into account the ways that meanings are projected in these new modalities. Unsworth suggests that if language teachers are to meet the current communicative needs of their students, they need to be aware of how these multiple meaning-making resources are formed, the ways they can be interpreted, and the kinds of metalanguage which can be used to develop teaching methods. These multiple meaning making resources include not only the newer computer-based modes, but also the traditional or conventional formats and the ways that they are evolving. One especially important form of literacy is that of visual literacy, as many visual forms (images, diagrams, graphs, schematic drawings, etc.) are increasingly being utilized in conventional classroom texts as well as in the new forms of technology. Language teachers now need to become more aware of their students' visual literacy needs, and they need to develop methodologies to take advantage of the new Internet, software, and distance-learning technologies developed, as well as the more conventional communication forms such as page-based textbooks.
To do this teachers need to take a fresh look at the role of visual forms of communication in language classrooms, and this is exactly what our workshop in JALT 2002 aims to do. Language teachers have always been aware of the possibility of using visual means of communication as an adjunct to their teaching, but it is now time to focus on just how they can engage with multimodal resources. In particular, we can make a start here by looking at page-based multimodal resources. Once we have a means of talking about visuals and how they realize various meanings, we can then start to consider the verbal (written) aspect that may occur in combination with images. Obviously, the various kinds of images in combination with the writing are not placed on the pages at random, but are placed there for various semantic purposes by the authors and graphic designers (Royce, 1999a, 1999b). Language teachers need to unpack just what these meanings are and how both visual and written modes can work in combination.
One of the first ways to do this is to consider the various visual forms of representation and to clarify the kinds of meanings they are encoding. By adopting a questioning approach, almost any image type can be analyzed in terms of what it presents, or its subject matter. A visual can also be considered in terms of who it is being presented to (the expected target audience), how the audience is being addressed (asked questions, given information, etc.), and whether there are relations of power or inclusion/exclusion being expressed. A visual can also be considered in terms of how it is presenting its messages, or in terms of its composition or layout (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; O'Toole, 1994; Royce, 2000, in press). The important questions addressed in this workshop will focus on visuals in terms of the following questions, which focus on the subject matter of the visual:
- Identification: who or what are the represented participants (actors, living or non-living), or who or what is in the visual frame?
- Activity: what is happening, or what action is taking place between the actor(s) and the recipient(s) or object(s) of that action?
- Circumstances: what are the elements that are concerned with the setting, are about participants not involved with the action, or are concerned with elements used by the actors?
- Attributes: what are the qualities and characteristics of the participants?
The kind of approach adopted in our JALT 2002 workshop can do two things for the participants. First, it can provide a metalanguage for describing just what meanings are being visually represented. Second, this metalanguage can then be used by teachers to develop activities to help students extract just what the visuals are trying to say to them, to perhaps relate these visual messages to any accompanying written text, and to then use them to contribute to developing students' overall multiliteracy skills. Some of the most important areas here may involve their reading development, as in the enhancement of their reading readiness skills, an increase in and consolidation of vocabulary knowledge, and the improvement of comprehension with narrative genres (thus improving students' understanding of a plot). The students' writing development can be enhanced (especially in the area of narrative writing), as well as their speaking and listening skills (ample opportunities can be provided for students to converse with the teacher and peers). This approach can also be used for evaluating speaking skills in an assessment context. So, one of the central outcomes for this workshop will be for participants, as a result of the activities, to discover how a single image, even in isolation from any accompanying verbal text, can be a rich source of meanings which can be used for educational purposes.
References
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
O'Toole, M. (1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press.
Royce, T. (1998). A metafunctional view of intersemiosis in The Economist magazine: A framework for analysis. In T. D'Haen & C. Barfoot (Eds.), Language and beyond (pp.157-176). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Editions Rodopi B.V.
Royce, T. (1999a). Visual-verbal intersemiotic complementarity in The Economist magazine. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Reading, United Kingdom.
Royce, T. (1999b). Synergy on the Page: Exploring intersemiotic complementarity in page-based multimodal text. In JASFL Occasional Papers: No.1 (pp. 25-49). Tokyo: Japan Association of Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Royce, T. (2000, March). The visual and the verbal: An investigation of ideational intersemiotic complementarity in page-based science text. In Language, media, and science education [SFL perspectives on science and education]. Colloquium conducted at the meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Royce, T. (in press). Multimodality in the TESOL classroom: Exploring visual-verbal synergy. TESOL Quarterly Forum, Summer.
Unsworth, L. (2001). Teaching muliliteracies across the curriculum: Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.
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