Living English through Multimodal Texts
Multimodal Texts
The unit "Living English through multimodal texts” represents contemporary English teaching in secondary contexts through careful use of highly relevant and engaging texts that facilitate multi-literacy skills, the purposeful integration of ICT and the use of multimedia to further student outcomes and to present content in a congruent way (Callow & Zammit, 2002).
This is based on English pedagogy that places emphasis on the development of skills and knowledge that are transferrable to new situations and contexts. In other words, the unit of work is based on the premise that students need to develop deep knowledge and skills, which can then be translated to future learning experiences and new contexts, such as employment (Bearne, 2003).
Identified with exhibitions that were originally presented only at the Tokyo Museum of Itabashi, and recognized as one of the most popular texts in the analysis of multimedia aspects of education, Shaun Tan’s novel, “The Lost Thing,” hit several headlines and was known for its most praiseworthy mention at the Italian Bologna International Book Fair. Other than this, the CBCA nominated the book and finally honoured it for the award of Aurealis. Further, the Illustration Spectrum Award in the United States of America was granted to the illustrated version of this same novel, “The Lost Thing.”
Other than the text based awards worn by the novel, motion pictures and movies based on the book have also come up in several versions. These have either been staged at different places again and again, or have worn awards for various elements of exceptionalities. Jigsaw, a theatre group that is mainly associated with the youth; which is based in Canberra and which is registered as a company in Australia has managed to stage a multi-media adaptation of The Lost Thing in the Australian National Gallery. This happened in the year 2004. Currently, a film production company called Passion Pictures, working from London is involved in the adaptation of an animated version of picture motions from the Novel; “The Lost Thing,” in order to come up with an animated movie version of the same.
As a text, Shaun Tan’s novel is a true representation of the idea of Living English through multimodal texts. The main idea of the novel is the idea of “The Lost Thing.” This is presented as a peculiar and bizarre living being that a boy who is fond of collecting bottle tops comes across, close to the beach while in his bottle top collection routine. Presumed to indefinably combine an octopus, a crab and an industrial boiler, the creature lacks other definitions and it is for this reason that we arrive at the description: “The Lost Thing,” given to us by the narrator of the story.
In a society composed of indifference and triviality, the boy fails to find an owner to “The Lost Thing.” Still in search of whoever owns “The Lost Thing,” the boy meets a different creature that offers him an occupational card that bears a sinister sign. It is only through this sign that he manages to trace the utopian land for lost things. Despite the fact that he is unable to tell whether “The Lost Thing” belongs there or not, he decides to leave it there for the lost and subsequently proceed with his life later. Multimodal representations are found in these texts in different perspectives. Just as expressed in Table I, and Further illustration on the above details is done by Walsh (2003), without mincing his words he demonstrates that:
“Affordance means what is made possible by the modes used. In the case of print-based texts this affordance lies in the ‘telling’. The way the words are used in a narrative such as Milo’s Wolves enables the young reader to engage with the female narrator. The informal language and humorous asides reassure the reader that the ‘wolves’ may not be dangerous because they are used as a metaphor for the misadventures of the father, Milo. We are also given the sense from the early stage of the story that this Milo will be more of an anti-hero than a tragic figure like that of Greek mythology. It is the words (i.e. the whole verbal style, discourse, figurative language and grammar) or the ‘telling’ of the first-person narrator that reassure us. In contrast, the affordance of the visuals on the cover of The Wolf creates unease through the choice of participants and use of colour, angles, framing and perspective. The ‘showing’ of the elements of the visuals, together with the two words of the title, synchronously creates the unease that is sustained throughout the book” (Walsh, 2003, pp. 123-130).
Main Analytical
Applying ICT (Teaching Picture Books) to Lear and Teach English
Microsoft created a Photo Story tool that is downloadable free at (Microsoft's website www.microsoft.com/photostory). This tool enables the teacher to inscribe a text to every picture, attach a recorded own voice, supplement with music. Both the teacher and the students can engage this tool Photo Story in learning English. Most importantly the Teachers applies this tool in an introduction an English topic or theme, which is new to the class or the class is to begin learning, or an imaginative, innovative English assignment, which the students are suppose to tackle. ICT developed pictures are not only relevant to young English learners, but it can also work well with the secondary environment, in that it can challenge the Language ability of this group of students, for example to gauge the pronunciation ability of the students, the teacher can give the students a task to record their own pronunciation of the pictures and inscribed texts in the pictures, and the most interesting part is the comparison of the overall outcome of the class using an ICT English teaching software, in which the teacher will evaluate and present the overall assignment using pictures, and attached voices recording of the right answers (Durrant & Green, 2000).
In secondary English Teaching “Similarities: meaning-making” can be applied. Interpreting and meaning-making process can be used by a teacher to demonstrate similarities in the reading of the three dissimilar texts, and this happens if ‘reading’ images or words, or all of them combined, mainly in information captured in a non-fiction text, novel, an electronic screen a picture book, a media text, or an information text, the students have to develop the ability to make meaning and understand the communication (Heath, 2000). The teacher ought to clearly comprehend the cultural context; the social tenacity of the specific multimodal text and this indulgence will be connected to the students’ main aim in using the specific text or ICT picture, more of this is expressed in Figure 2.
Considerations for Applying Pictures/Photo Story as English Teaching ICT Resource
It’s no doubt that the application of Multimedia Text, Photo Story, and Pictures as ICT English resources, posses the issue of copyright of the pictures to the teacher. There is no worry only when the teacher uses self drawn pictures or personal camera taken pictures. The teacher should also prefer using pictures from websites with no copyrights, like www.fotofinnaren.se, www.flickr.com, www.multimedia.skolverket.se and many others (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).
Importance of Application of ICT (Teaching Picture Books) to Lear and Teach English
It’s true as highlighted by Lankshear and Noble (2003) that:
“The Lost Thing is a 2000 picture book, written and illustrated by Shaun Tan. This book was adapted into 15-minute animated short film in 2010, directed by Tan and Andrew Ruhemann and narrated by Tim Minchin. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. It was nominated for the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form” (Lankshear & Noble, 2003).
The same people suggested that just like the other learning field, its mandatory to adopt ICT in teaching and learning English in secondary. The film can be accessed through various ICT modals by both the students and the teachers. Hence, since most Teaching Picture Books have been turned into short films to embrace the ICT nature of the current modern education, the teachers should be ready to apply them in this state using ICT, it’s an idea whose time has come and nothing can stop it. The main importance for application of ICT in teaching and learning secondary English under this point, is the fact that most available materials and teaching equipment relating to Teaching Picture Books are in various ICT forms leaving the teachers and the students with no option but to embrace ICT (Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn & Tsaatsarelis, 2001).
In conclusion it’s worth noting as Lemke (2002), Snyder (2003) and Simpson (2004) subsequently realized that: although this paper’s analysis of excerpts from The Lost Thing and various relevant literature highlighting the three actual different texts, and above all multimodal texts and its application in teaching English using ICT, the paper have put forwards various suggestions on how the teachers can establish and nature the students understanding and respond to picture books in learning English. Particularly it is apparent that the development of meaning-making alone is the core of the application of picture books in teaching English in secondary, this transpires in comparable ways for and multimodal texts, print-based, although the ‘processing’ of manners is actually dissimilar. It is apparent that ‘affordance’ of various modes, inside the application of picture books and multimodal texts, have a vital function in teaching English which is the constructing meaning. Equally multimodal texts are changing, hence, necessitating a conceptual framework, and a ‘norm’ that is used for reading multimodal texts in ICT applications, to capture appreciative of the processing and affordance of different modes (Lemke, 2002, pp. 229-325). This is to update pertinent pedagogy; extra analysis is desirable of the multifaceted combinations of modes in story and realistic multimodal texts. Emphasis should also be but on advance research is to scrutinize how students can use advanced ICT software to construct meaning from the picture books and these texts.
Reverences
Arizpe, E. & Styles, M. (2003).Children Reading Picture. Interpreting visual texts. London: Routledge Falmer.
Bearne, E. (2003). “Rethinking literacy: communication, representation and text” in Reading Literacy and Language, 37:3, 98-103.
Callow, J. & Zammit, K. (2002). “ Visual literacy: from picture books to electronic texts” in Monteith, M. (ed.) Teaching Primary Literacy with ICT. Buckingham, Open University Press.
Durrant, C. and Green, B. (2000). Literacy and the new technologies in school education: Meeting the information Technology (IT) Literacy challenge? In The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 23 (2), 89-108.
Heath, S.B. (2000). “Seeing our Way into Learning” in Cambridge Journal of Education, 30:1, 121-131.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001.) Multimodal Discourse, London: Arnold.
Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J. & Tsaatsarelis, C, (2001). Multimodal Teaching and Learning. The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum
Lankshear, C. & Noble, M. (2003). New Literacies. Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Lemke, J. (2002). “Travels in hypermodality” in Visual Communication, 1:3, October, 229-325.
Simpson, A. (2004). Visual literacy: A coded language for viewing in the classroom. PEN 142, Sydney: PETA.
Snyder, I. (ed) (2003). Silicon Literacies: Communication, Innovation and Education in the Electronic Age, London: Routledge.
Walsh, M. (2003). “’Reading’ Pictures: What do they Reveal? Young Children’s Reading of Visual Texts”, in Reading Literacy and Language, 37:3, 123-130.
