Kate Paesani, Director, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
The Multiliteracies Framework and Interpretive Communication: Curricular and Instructional Perspectives
Over the past two decades, postsecondary foreign language programs have experienced a shift away from an emphasis on oral communication toward more text-based curricula and the development of students’ multiple literacies. This “literacy turn” prioritizes overlapping language modalities, interpretation and creation of multimodal texts of various genres, and linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural dimensions of learning. In this talk, I examine interpretive communication through this literacy lens, focusing in particular on curricular and pedagogical applications of authentic audio and video texts using the knowledge processes framework of multiliteracies pedagogy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, & Dalley-Trim, 2016). I begin by outlining a rationale for literacy-oriented curriculum and instruction, and then describe an ongoing project at the University of Minnesota to develop students’ interpretive listening and viewing abilities through multiliteracies lesson plans. Next, I present findings from two studies related to this project—one on lesson plan analysis and one on teacher learning—and conclude with implications for postsecondary language programs and teacher professional development.
Friday, March 1, 2019
3 – 5 pm
B-4 Dwinelle Hall
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