A MULTILITERACIES

FRAMEWORK FOR
COLLEGIATE FOREIGN
LANGUAGE TEACHING
________________________
By

Kate Paesani
Heather Willis Allen
Beatrice Dupuy

PEARSON
 Making the Case for Literacy in Collegiate
Foreign Language Programs

Replacing the two-tiered language-literature structure with a broader and more coherent
curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuous whole
will reinvigorate language departments as valuable academic units central to the humanities
and to the missions of institutions of higher education. (p. 3)

In this book, we respond to concerns regarding how students reach advanced-level

competencies by addressing two interrelated goals. The first goal is to outline a coherent
pedagogical framework that responds to the aforementioned calls for change and provides
an alternative to the differing instructional goals and techniques that characterize bifurcated
programs. The second goal is to present this framework in an accessible manner for novice
collegiate FL teachers.

Within this approach, give its priority for engaging students in text-focused literacy events,
reading and writing are integral to meaning construction rather than support skills intended
for practice of language forms. However, instead of carrying out text-centric literary
analysis, learners are encouraged to interpret, transform, and think critically about discourse
through a variety of contexts and written, oral and visual textual genres. Texts are therefore
essential to our approach.

1. Communicative Language Teaching: History,

Contributions, and Limitations

Since the 1970s, communicative language teaching (CLT) has been the
predominant approach to teaching FLs in the United States. The origins of CLT are
based in research from European linguists with social and functional orientations
(e.g., Hallyday, 1978; Hymes, 1972) and in shifting priorities in education at time.
This work led to the notion of communicative competence, which
characterized the ability of classroom language learners to interact with other
speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to recite dialogues or
perform on discrete point tests of grammatical knowledge (Savignon, 1972, p. 2).
Celce-Murcia (2007), building on past models as well as her previous work
on communicative competence, proposed a third model of communicative
competence that includes the familiar notions of linguistic, discourse,
sociolinguistics, and strategic competence, as well as the notions of formulaic and
interactional competence.
Language learning from a CLT perspective, therefore, entails interaction,
collaboration, negotiation, attention to input and feedback, focus on meaning, and
creative, experiential language use (Jacobs & Farrell, 2003; Richards, 2006).
That fact that CLT has evolved into a generalized approach that can be
applied in a number of ways attest to its importance and popularity, and it has
certainly made a number of significant contributions to FL teaching. First and
foremost, CLT reminds us that the purpose of FL teaching is not mastery of
grammatical forms, but rather development of students ability to communicate
 effectively with others (Littlewood, 2011). Moreover, the concept of communicative
competence underscores that grammatical mastery alone is insufficient; competency
also has sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic dimensions. A second important
contribution of CLT is the idea that form and meaning are related. To communicate
effectively, one must use grammar and vocabulary to carry out meaningful language
functions. Finally, CLT opened the door to implementing collaborative, interactive,
and student-focused classroom practice activities due to a shift away from the
teacher-fronted instruction that typified audiolingualism.
Although we do not advocate a complete abandonment of CLT or
communicative competence, we do believe that the role these concepts play in FL
programs should be reconsidered, given the problems related to departmental
bifurcation, curricular coherence, and pedagogical approaches identified here. We
see two main limitation of CLT in its current form. (1) its heavy focus on oral,
functional language use; and (2) its superficial treatment of cultural and textual
content.
Earlier we highlighted that current CLT reflects a set of generally agreed
upon principles (Richards, 2006, p. 22). This viewpoint has contributed to the
notion of principled eclecticism (Kumaravadivelu, 1994), in which teachers apply
these principles through conscious reflection about how they best fit the needs of
their students and instructional context. However, principled eclecticism may not be
the most effective solution to the limitations of CLT outlined here. For instance, it is
not clear what CLT-based principles instructors follow or whether their adoption of
these principles is grounded in theoretical or classroom-based research about the
nature of FL learning. Moreover, principled eclecticism implies that instructors
adopt CLT in pieces rather than as a whole, thus compromising its validity as a
coherent pedagogical approach. Indeed, CLT appears to mean different things to
different people and is thus used as a generalized umbrella term (Harmer, 2007, p.
70) to describe any teaching approach with the goal of developing communicative
abilities.
In the past decade, literacy has been the predominant framework for curricular
and pedagogical reform in collegiate FL programs (e.g., Allen & Paesani, 2010;
Byrnes, Maxim & Norris, 2010; Kern 2000; Kern & Schultz, 2005; Mantero, 2006;
Swaffar & Arens, 2005). [] Only the multiliteracies framework outlines a
pedagogical approach for putting into practice curricular goals, content, and
communication and foreground texts, both literary and non-literary, as the core
content of FL courses. [] Moreover, firmly aligning teaching practices according
to one theoretical concept and approach (i.e., literacy and the multiliteracies
framework) avoids the pitfalls of principled eclecticism and equips teachers with a
coherent foundation for FL teaching and learning that can be applied across
curricular levels.

2. What is Literacy?

The concept of literacy has been studied in multiple contexts and through
numerous theoretical perspectives. Traditionally, literacy has been defined as the
ability to read and write. This definition reflects the autonomous model of literacy,
which posits that literacy exists independently of social factors and social practices.
It as the predominant view prior to the social turn that took place in the humanities
and social sciences in the 1970s and 1980s (Lankshear, 1999; Street, 1984).
According to Kern (2003), this traditional view of literacy tends to limit reading
and writing to straightforward acts of information transfer (p. 44). The result is that
for many foreign language sutedents, the de facto goal of reading is uncovering the
meaning, the theme, the point of a text. That is to say, what the teacher reveals in
class. Similarly, writing is all too often about capturing in the right words the
summary or the analysis of something they have read.
In conjunction with the social turn and as a reaction to the autonomous model,
ideological models of literacy and New Literacy Studies emerged. The ideological
model posts that literacy is a social practice rather than an individual skill; literacy
is shaped through interaction, as opposed to residing wholly in the private mind of
the individual. Defining literacy as social practice means that literacy varies
according to social context and is embedded in cultural practices. In other words,
reading, writing, viewing, and other literacy practices can be understood only within
the social, political, historical, cultural, and economic contexts within which they
take place. Moreover, because these contexts are meaning based, literacy itself is
about making meaning (Gee, 2012; Lankshear 1999; Reder & Davila, 2005; street,
1997, 2000).
For the purpose of this book, we adopt the following definition of literacy,
which reflects ideas related to ideological models of literacy and sociocultural views
of language learning summarized above:

Literacy is the use of socially-, historically-, and culturally-situated practices of creating and
interpreting meaning through texts. It entails at least a tacit awareness of the relationships between
textual conventions and their contexts of use and, ideally, the ability to reflect critically on those
relationships. Because it is purpose-sensitive, literacy is dynamicnot staticand variable across
and within discourse communities and cultures. It draws on a wide range of cognitive abilities, on
knowledge of written and spoken language, on knowledge of genres, and on cultural knowledge.
(Kern, 2000, p. 16).

Inherent in this definition are three dimensions of literacy: linguistic, cognitive, and
sociocultural.

- Linguistic dimension of literacy: has a text focus (Kucer, 2009, p. 311) and
includes knowledge related to syntactic, morphological, and lexical features of
language, as its name suggests. Yet this linguistic dimension goes far beyond
these formal features to involve the ability to understand and produce linguistic
features of language and to apply conventions that dictate how these linguistic
features work together to create phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and so on (Kern,
2000). Code breaker and code maker.
- Cognitive dimension of literacy: focuses on the mind and the mental strategies
and processes that go into constructing meaning from text (Kucer, 2009). It
involves the ability to access existing knowledge to establish connections
between different pieces of information and to create and transform new
knowledge. Moreover, the cognitive dimension entails the use of various mental
processes and strategies to construct meaning and overcome difficulties as one
 interacts with textual content (e.g., inferencing, predicting, evaluating, revising).
Meaning maker.
- Sociocultural dimension of literacy: moves us away from a view of the learner
as autonomous and toward the idea that literacy is socially constructed; it is
shared and changed by members of a society or group (Kern, 2000). The
sociocultural dimension of literacy further entails an awareness of the dynamic
nature of culture and of the ways in which culture influences how we think. It
also includes an understanding of communicative norms, expectations, and
values and how these vary within and across social groups. Text user and Text
critic (Kucer, 2009, p. 7).

To develop FL literacy, including its linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural

dimensions, we follow Kern (2000) and highlight seven principles that can help
translate our definition of literacy into the concrete realities of FL teaching,
assessment, and curriculum design (see p. 13):

- Language Use
- Conventions
- Cultural knowledge
- Interpretation
- Collaboration
- Problem solving
- Reflection/self-reflection

2.1 MULTIMODALITY

Multimodality underscores the fact that that literacy is not just about written text,
nor is just about reading and writing. It is instead about the complementary and
overlapping nature of language modalities, including reading, writing, speaking,
listening, and viewing. [] In addition, modern communication practices,
particularly those that are technology enhanced, combine text with image,
movement, hypertext, or sound. As a result, in a profound sense, all meaning-
making is multimodal (New London Group, 1996, p. 81). Multimodal texts are
defined as text which communicate their message using more than one semiotic
mode, or channel of communication (OpenLearn, 2010). The individual
components of multimodal texts (e.g., words, sounds, images) take on new
meanings when combined with one another, and the study of multimodality involves
looking at these components and how they interact to convey meaning. Our
understanding of texts throughout this book is therefore quite broad. In keeping with
the multiliteracies approach, we define texts to include written, oral, visual,
audiovisual, and digital documents or documents that combine one or more of these
modalities.

3. Why Literacy?

[] As you will see in the remainder of this book, developing FL literacy through
interaction with authentic texts allows us to treat language and literary-cultural content
as an integrated whole. As a result, texts become the locus of the thoughtful and
creative act of making connections between grammar, discourse, and meaning, between
language and content, between language and culture, and between another culture and
ones own (Kern, 2000, p. 46).
Not only does a literacy orientation provide a foundation for reconfiguring the
structure of FL programs through instruction, assessment, and texts, it also challenges
teachers and learners to rethink their beliefs and assumptions about the teaching of
grammar, skills, or culture from a holistic and multimodal perspective. As we saw
earlier, CLT tends to tease out the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking
and to situate skill development in functional contexts that do not allow deep
engagement with cultural content.

CHAPTER 1
UNDERSTANDING THE
MULTILITERACIES FRAMEWORK

Our focus here is on the multiliteracies framework, also called a pedagogy of

multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009); Kern, 2000; New London Group, 1996),
which is socially responsive pedagogy that helps us how to connect a sociocultural
perspective of learning to classroom teaching (Hall, 2001), p. 51). This pedagogical
approach emphazise[s] interdependence among speaking, listening, reading, and
writing skills and focus[es] students attention on the interactions between linguistic
form, situational context, and communicative and expressive functions (Kern, 2003, p.
51). As such, multiliteracies pedagogy not only reflects the definition of literacy we
have developed so thus far, but unifies, rather than separates, the study of language and
the study of literary-cultural content.

1. Meaning Design: Interpreting

and Transforming Text

Meanin design underlies every aspect of multiliteracies pedagogy and reflects many
of the ideas you read about in the Introduction. Meaning design is related to
linguistics, cognitive, and sociocultural dimensions of literacy; it is compatible with
the seven principles of literacy; and it encourages a multimodal view of language
development and use.

1.1 WHAT IS MEANING DESIGN?

Within the multiliteracies framework, learning is viewed as a process of discovery.

Meaning design reflects this view of learning because it is a dynamic process of
discovering form-meaning connections through the acts of interpreting and creating
written, oral, visual, audiovisual, and digital texts. [] Because stablishing form-
meaning connections depends on both the content of a text and how learners interact
with it, we can say that design has a dual function: It may refer to the process of
creating or interpreting a text or to a particular product.
Meaning Design involves three elements: Available Design, Designing, and the
Redesigned (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; New London Group, 1996).
 Available Design

Meaning Design Designing

Redesigned
- Available designs, which we discuss in detail in the next section, involve the
linguistic, cultural, and social resources that a learner draws on in understanding
and creating texts. Examples of available designs include knowledge of
vocabulary and grammar, expectations related to the organization of information
text types, or personal experiences related to a particular topic.
- Designing, to interpret or create a text, learners engage in Designing, the act of
doing something with Available Design of meaning, be that communicating with
others (such as writing, speaking, or making pictures) or representing the world
to oneself or others representations of it (such as reading, listening, or
viewing) (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 177). Designing is a process of
accessing, applying, and recycling Available Design in fresh ways to create
meaning from texts. It always results in something new called the Redesigned.
- Redesigned, understood as a transformed representation of Available Design.
The product resulting from Designing might be a new text, image, or idea that
can become a resource in another persons repertoire of Available Design.

If we fail to make meaning design a priority in FL instruction and assessment,

language learning cannot take place effectively.
In sum, five key features of meaning design emerge from our discussion:

1. Design is the dynamic process of discovering meaning through textual

interpretation and creation.
2. Design may refer to both a process (the act of creating or interpreting a text)
and a product (a text and the forms, organization, and content that
characterize it).
3. Design encompasses the linguistic and schematic resources that contribute to
a texts meaning.
4. Design involves attention to our social and cultural knowledge and
experiences.
5. Design engages learners in the processes of interpretation, collaboration,
problem solving, and reflection.

2. Engaging Learners in Meaning Design: Applying

the What and the How of Multiliteracies Pedagogy

Three intertwined components comprise the framework through which we

encourage learners to design meaning from target language texts: (1) the what of
multiliteracies pedagogy; (2) the how of multiliteracies pedagogy; and (3) the
application of the what and how. This framework is represented graphically in
Figure 1.1.
The what of multiliteracies:

a) Language use
b) Cultural knowledge
c) Conventions

The how of multiliteracies:

a) Interpretation
b) Collaboration
c) Problem Solving
d) Reflection/self-reflection

The application of multiliteracies:

a) Situated practice
b) Overt instruction
c) Critical framing
d) Transformed practice

2.1 THE WHAT OF MULTILITERACIES PEDAGOGY:

AVAILABLE DESIGN AND TEXT

Every student brings to the class a repertoire of available designs of meaning

across a number of modesthe things they have read, heard, and seen as a part of
their lifeworld and previous educational experiences. From learner to learner, no
two experiences of available designs can ever be quite the same. These may be
supplemented by new designs offered by the teacherdifferent kinds of written,
oral, visual, gestural and other texts. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).
 Linguistic

Schematic

Visual
Available Design
Audio

Gestural

Spatial

- Linguistic resources: are associated with parts of a language and how those parts
are put together; they constitute the tool kit necessary to form words, sentences,
and paragraphs (punctuation, sound-spelling correspondences, word formation
patterns, and agreement rules).
- Schematic resources: are associated with how textual meaning is organized and
what knowledge is required to process the meaning in texts. (Lived experiences,
scholarly knowledge, and the ability to recognized different genres).

According to Kern (2000), awareness of conventions and the genres they typify
is essential because learners can then see relationships between new patterns of
discourse and those they have already encountered and they can become aware of
the characteristically patterned ways that people in the community use language to
fulfill particular communicative purposes in recurring situations. (p. 183)
Genre, a schematic resource, is an oral or written rhetorical practice that
structure culturally embedded communicative situations in a highly predictable
pattern, thereby creating horizons of expectations for its community of users
(Swaffar & Arens, 2005, p. 99). Some genres, such as personal ads, poetry, or movie
previews, may be more accessible to lower-level learners than other genres such as
theater, news broadcasts, or editorials.
Cultural knowledge entails the beliefs, practices, perspectives, values, and
products that characterize a cultural group or system. [] It is often understood as a
learners background knowledge, or content schemata, as well as the stories
associated with that knowledge.