Multiliteracies Archive

This paper argues that any approach to the teaching of history in the second language classroom must consider how history is constructed and what is at stake in such representations. Doing so opens up the possibility of developing students’ symbolic competence through critical reflexivity at three interrelated levels...

Among the challenges faced by L2 instructors is the inclusion of historical memories. Although they are foundational to a culture’s identity, sometimes they are so far removed from students’ present reality that they have no familiarity with them. Meeting this challenge requires ...

This article addresses the teaching of complex representations of history through the study of literary texts in the college-level intermediate German class, employing the categories and tenets of Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus analysis (see also Scollon, 2001). Nexus analysis is a model for understanding the meeting point of social actions and multiple discourses, each ...

In Fall 2005, widespread riots shook France. Was Paris really burning? What actually did happen in France that fall? If the “social unrest,” as it was called was symptomatic of serious social and political issues in France, it was largely misconstrued in some American media outlets ...

Teaching Chinese cultural perspectives in CFL instruction is more challenging than teaching about Chinese cultural products and behavior. It is challenging because most textbooks do not orient their approach to it, because native-Chinese-speaking teachers tend to overlook it as it is so much a part of them that ...

This paper begins by arguing that the time has come for film, and film clips in particular, to take on a more central place in the foreign language curriculum. It describes in some detail the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips ...

The 2007 MLA Report calls for large-scale reform in university foreign language (FL) departments to integrate the study of language, literature, and culture and move beyond the the language-content dichotomy that has characterized the undergraduate curriculum for decades. This article explores the implications of these recommendations for introductory FL courses, arguing ...