La Salle university

Literacies and ELT

Sonia Milena Angulo Bernal
Brayan Nicolas Carrillo Estvez
Gina Camila Alonso Fernndez

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Didactic unit

Case 3:
Population: seventh semester pre-service English teachers, private university in Bogot.
Number of students: 28 students ( 14 young women and 14 young men).
Age: 19 to 22 years old.
Classroom characteristics:
The room is comfortable and looks neat.
Equipment and internet available at times.
Circle arrangement.
Classes are from 1pm to 3pm They study two times a week: Mondays and Fridays.
Most students have taken pedagogy and didactic classes. They are technology enthusiasts.
Students are eager to try innovating projects.
Language level:
Students can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly
encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. They can deal with most situations likely to arise
whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. They can produce a simple
connected text on topics, which are familiar, or of personal interest. They can describe
experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and
explanations for opinions and plans.

Unit overview

Overall aims

Multimodality in the classroom, tools and

ways to understand, analyze and create
meanings through images, advertisement
and movies.

Language aim: To encourage the build of

representations according to verbal
language and visual.
Communication aim:To develop multimodal
communicative competence in students.
Learning aim:To use semiotic resources
and PPT metafunctions to go beyond of
advertisements and movies intentions.

Assessment

Anticipated problems

The assessment for this didactic unit is the

elaboration of advertising about a movie.

students cant understand

theoretical content.
students dont know how
associate all topics seen in class.
Audiovisual media can not
work properly.

Lesson aim or objective

Stages and main

procedures

Resources

Lesson 1
Students are able to
understand and use the
concept of visual design,
following some topics like
multiliteracies, their types
and their uses for
educational purposes.

1- The teacher begins the

class talking about
multiliteracies and their
types.
2- The teacher will play
some videos about these
topics, the idea is that when
the videos finish, he will ask
some questions about the
topic.
3- The teacher will clarify
doubts and he will explain
the concept of visual
design.

Computer
Video beam
Multiliteracies videos

Lesson 2
Students are able to create
a mind map with some
important ideas taken from
previous concepts about
pedagogy and the concepts
seen last class.

1- The teacher will start with

some concepts of pedagogy
related to multiliteracies.
2- He will ask the students
to create groups of 4.
He will describe the activity
for the class, the idea is that
the students create a mind
map with main concepts
about the topics he
explained previously.
3-He will do a socialization
in front of the classroom,
the idea is that each group
explain their ideas.
4- Task: The students need
to create a blog for discuss
the results of their mind
maps.

Computer
Video beam
PPT presentation about
pedagogy and
multiliteracies
Board
Markers.

Lesson 3
Students are able to
analyze visual information
following three
metafunctions: the
representational, the
interactional and the
compositional.

1-The teacher begins the

class talking about
semiotics and visual
analysis.
2- The teacher presents a
creative exposition using
audiovisual media about
different concepts of
metafunctions of visual
design.
3-The students make
questions and the teacher
clarifies doubts.
4-Task for the next lesson.

Computer
Video Beam
Audio player
PPT metafunctions

Lesson 4
Students are able to
analyze an advertisement
following three
metafunctions: the
representational, the
interactional and the
compositional.

1- Students form groups of

4 and they have to prepare
an analysis of an
advertisement using the
three metafunctions: the
representational, the
interactional and the
compositional.

Computer
Video Beam
Audio player
Advertisement

Lesson 5

1-In groups of 4 people,

students will do a cover
page of a magazine
advertising,where put into
practice all topics seen in
previous classes,( the
representational, the
interactional and the
compositional metafunction,
advertising semiotic) in a
creative way.
2-Group by group will
present their projects to
their partners where show
how they use topics learned
in class.

Computer
Video Beam
Audio player

Final project

Defining multiliteracies

Lesson 1 and 2:
-Creating and generating is an excellent example of
how digital literacies truly encompass non digital
forms of literacy as well. Indeed, we are creating and
generating as we write a letter, keep a journal in a
spiral note-book, or draw illustrations on paper. In the
digital realm, creating and generating is facilitated
through technologies such as wikis, blogs, podcasts,
e-portfolios, augmented reality (AR), and multiuser
virtual environments (MUVEs). (Summey, 2013, p. 6)
The use of a blog in very useful for the students because
they will interact with each other by internet and they
generate a common knowledge and develop their ideas
and clarify their doubt.This kind of interaction will improve
their technological skills.
-Teaching with a piece of technology merely
demonstrates a device or application, even with
hands-on student participation. Teaching students
how to use a technology tool loads them with skill
sets that will likely be obsolete in a short time as
technology changes rapidly. (Summey, 2013, p. 21)
It is important to involve technology in an education
process due to the students need to be more recursive in
the way they receive knowledge and create their own
meanings.
-If teachers help students learn to use their literacy
identities in this way they will become more flexible
and strategic about literate activities. They will learn
to reflect on and combine and recombine their
resources to complete tasks. Note that the students
literacy identity includes social and cultural
resources, technological experience, and all previous
life experiences, as well as specific literacy
knowledge and experience. Because literacy is a
social practice, being literate goes beyond specific
literacy knowledge to include social and cultural
behavior. ( Anstey & Bull 2006, p. 35)
It is important for the teacher to accompany their students
in their educational process because he is the guide, he
needs to know about their context and he is the guide of
their process. The self- reflection is not only a practice for
the teacher, it is for the student too.

Pedagogical and
theoretical rationale0

Lesson 3 and 4:
-In our globalized and culturally diverse world,
communication is increasingly multimodal, hence the
importance of devoting attention in the classroom to

how semiotic resources other than verbal language

have been used to create identities and to position
people socially (Bezerra, 2011, p.167).
The use of activities like in lesson 3, develop different
skills in students for managing information and
communication, also, help them to be prepare for the
necessities of this changing digital world.
-Students will undoubtedly have increased contact
with texts which not only use varied semiotic
resources, but whose access has also changed,
including to a greater extent the computer-mediated
technologies (Bezerra, 2011, p. 175).
The use of advertising and new technologies provide
students means to create new meanings and new way of
perceiving reality.
Pahl and Roswell (2005) describe modern
multimodality in terms of digital literacy:
"multimodality can be seen in every text and has
shifted how children engage with literacy. Students no
longer simply decode, skim and scan, but they move
across and among texts, design texts, create mark-up
code, render images, and so on.
The use of semiotics and visual analysis help students to
go beyond of the information, they develop abilities to
generate new representations and hidden meanings
creating a critical thinking about reality. On the other hand,
the use of visual activities and things of the context of the
students, motivate them to participate and use new
technologies as tools.
-The representational metafunction concerns how
participants and objects as well as events (processes)
and their associated circumstances are realized,
which may be done through narrative or conceptual
representations.
The narrative representations concern actions,
reactions, thought and speech. Actions and reactions
are represented by the presence of a vector
connecting the participants. In actions, the vector
departs from the actor and is directed towards the
goal.(Bezerra,2011,p.170).
-The conceptual representations, in turn, refer to
images that either classify (covert or overt taxonomy),
show part-whole relationships (analytical structured
or unstructured) or attribute/suggest values
(symbolic).(Bezerra,2011,p.170).
Those representations help students to establish what is

the relation between objects and characters in an image

and give to the public an idea of what is the situation
about.
-The interactional metafunction refers to the
interrelation between the image and the viewer. This
relationship can be analyzed in terms of interaction
(contact), social distance, attitude, power and realism.
(Bezerra,2011,p.171).
Students can realized through this metafunction what is
the reaction that produce in the viewer and the intention of
the advertisement.
-The compositional metafunction has to do with the
distribution of the elements and information in the
image, that is, the way in which the representational
and interactive elements are made to relate to each
other, the way they are integrated into a meaningful
whole (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006, p.176).
Students can understand what is the roll of colors and
elements in the image and the meaning that they give.

References:
Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies: Changing Times, Changing Literacies
by Michele Ansty and Geoff Bull.Copyright 2006 by the International Reading
Association.
Multimodality in the EFL classroom Multimodalidade na sala de aula de ingls
Fbio BEZERRA
Summey, D. (2013). Developing digital literacies. A framework for professional
learning. USA: Corwin A sage company.