Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to talking ELT, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. We're joined again today by Ed Charlote and Nick, and we'll be continuing our conversation on on multimodality.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: So today we've been talking about multimodal literacy. As a reminder, that's a version of literacy which goes beyond the traditional four skills of reading, writing, listening, speaking, and it goes much wider to look at other modes of communication that reflect the presence of multimedia in our world. So, including videos, images, sound, gestures, body language, it's a version of literacy that brings all of these together.
And last time we had a bit of an introduction to the topic. And now I want to move us into talking about viewing multimodal texts. When learners interact with and view texts that use many different mixed modes of communication, or even just a couple mixed modes of communication, how we can help students really interact with and critically view these texts. So my first question is very broadly, and I know I'm going very broad here, how can we help students do this? How can we help students learn to interact with multimodal text in a critical manner as we would with any other text?
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Well, I think it depends to some extent on the format of the text. But for video, for example, one of the things I really like to do is just turn the sound off and get students to watch, see how much information they can pick up just by viewing, because there is so much information visually there. I mean, that's the real power of video, is the visual side of it. You can tell lots of things about maybe a person's personality, about the relationship between two people just by watching. You can even pick up on perhaps what they're saying as well, because context is very strong. If you see a video of two people in a restaurant and a waiter coming up, regardless of the language, you probably know what they're going to say, what those exchanges will be. And so that can sort of help to guide you just by watching and seeing what's happening.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Okay, so a lot of it is about shifting the skills we would traditionally use away from, say, sound, like there would be sound in the video and towards those other elements.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: You can even tell a lot about the culture or the relationships between people by their proximity. How closely are they sitting together? How far apart are they sitting? That's a cultural thing as well. In some cultures, you can see that people touch in normal social situations. In other cultures, that's an absolute taboo. And to be able to pick up those things is part of being multimodal literate.
[00:02:59] Speaker D: And much easier to do that if you don't understand the language or can't hear the language.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:04] Speaker D: One of my daughters and I used to do a thing where as soon as tv shows became they had the thing where you could switch the language on using the remote control.
We would watch spanish language soap operas and we'd choose a five minute segment, think, okay, what's going on here? What's that shouting woman so upset about? And we didn't either of us speak Spanish. And we'd make guesses and predictions based on the things you were saying, nick. And then rewind, flip to English, the english dub, and then have our predictions confirmed or dashed as it might be. And that's the kind of thing that I think it really does feed into developing these kinds of skills. The other thing I'd say that works really well is comparison. So helping students to compare two versions of the same thing, whether that's two different covers of a book, to say which one they prefer and why or which one conveys a certain emotional state and how. I think that's always the best way to start rather than giving them one thing to analyze, but giving them two or three even and allowing them to compare them.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: That's an interesting one. I used to have a lesson that I did in Spain, and it compared. There was a very popular comedy soap opera on there about some friends who met together in a cafe. Sounds familiar. Very similar to an american comedy that did the same thing. And I took two parallel scenes and got them to watch them both and spot the cultural differences. And it was huge.
The difference between the one in Spain, everybody's sitting close together. There are people of all different ages. They have small coffee cups, the way they're using their hands compared to an american one where everybody's the same age, everybody's sitting wide apart with their huge coffee cups and was really interesting to do.
[00:04:53] Speaker E: And actually, that whole comparison thing has given me an idea for a lesson because I used to do the thing with the video that you did, Nick. But instead I'd get them to just listen to it so they wouldn't see the video. And from that, they had to sort know where these people were, what was going on, what their relationship was. So very much the same sort of questions, but they couldn't see the video. They could only hear it. And I wonder if you did an activity where you got one group of learners to only watch the video and not hear it and the other group to only hear the video and not see it. If what they drew from it was the same or different, and therefore, how is what we see and what we hear influenced, and how does that change our opinions of what's going on in a situation?
[00:05:48] Speaker C: You can do that as a matching activity. Like, you get one group of students to watch three different clips and one group of students to listen to three different clips, and then you put them together and they have to match up. Which was the one I heard with the one that you saw.
[00:06:04] Speaker E: Yeah, there you go. Someone's beating me to it.
[00:06:09] Speaker D: It strikes me that we're still dealing here with things such as the information gap, which have been around at the 1980s. We're still basing our lesson plans on the same kind of sound pedagogy that's always been part of an effective english teacher's toolkit. But we're just broadening our horizons and not thinking, I need to get a text and cut it up to create a jigsaw and an information gap. We're actually kind of in a world where people are always coming in in the middle of something or missing the start of something, and this multimodal world actually kind of is full of information gaps that we can just exploit naturally.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, and actually, I think that's a really interesting point because I think this idea of multimodal literacy in some ways can be a bit scary. But in a lot of ways, you are just taking the same approach you would to a listening text or a reading text, and even sometimes the same activities just tweaked slightly and applying them to something a bit more multimodal.
[00:07:05] Speaker E: Or maybe it's helping to contextualize the language better.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, but it feels like a lot of, as you were saying, a lot of the actual approach is quite similar. It's just about shifting the perspective.
[00:07:17] Speaker D: Yeah, I think so.
And for that reason, I'd say that the teachers who've always been interested in an approach to teaching which led to open ended destinations, let's say, would have been much more likely to feel comfortable with this type of approach that we're talking about today.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: I was thinking about your example again of listening and not being able to see. It's interesting as well, how that focus students on things that are beyond the language as well, because they're not just listening to what's being said. They're picking up on background sounds that they might be hearing and sort of any kind of physical sounds that they might be hearing around them as well. And that's kind of another interesting aspect of multimodality as well. Isn't it that we don't often draw.
[00:08:10] Speaker E: On, and I mentioned pragmatics previously, and I think it's a good activity to do with your higher level students, to get them to not just answer those sort of baseline questions of who do you think these people are and what do you think their relationship is? But what do you think was the meaning behind this when this person said this sentence? And really trying to analyze the way that maybe language is delivered in a particular context or situation that you think there they're in.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that reminds me of that film by Woody Allen, Annie hall. And there's a scene in it where they're talking together, but you see subtitles of what they're thinking and what they really mean and what they're saying is often very different from what you actually.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: So we've talked a lot about these viewing skills and how we can help support them in the classroom. But I also want to kind of look beyond the classroom a little bit because students interact with multimodal texts throughout their whole lives. They're on social media. They watch YouTube videos, they watch movies.
They probably don't read newspapers.
[00:09:22] Speaker D: They see advertising.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: They see advertising everything.
And I'm wondering how we can help learners develop their viewing skills and also engage with these kinds of texts critically outside the classroom.
[00:09:37] Speaker D: I suppose we're talking about noticing skills so we can plant a seed in a lesson, give students the challenge of noticing, for example, a way in which, for thinking about a topic like nutrition, we might be able to get them to notice the way that they're being persuaded or invited to consume certain foods rather than others, and to bring in examples of that which they can then explain or share or offer to their classmates as supporting evidence for the ideas that they're making. And all of the things, I think, feed into this general idea that when students bring something to class, it's always going to be more interesting than something the teacher has brought to class to talk about, of course. So those things that, things that you found on your way to school or things that you've seen on your way to school, the challenge that some teachers do of setting their students the task of taking a picture of something on your phone, if it's that age group, take a picture of something on your phone which is in connection with the topic that we're talking about today, is a great way to make that bridge from the world outside the classroom to what we're talking about in the english lesson.
[00:10:46] Speaker E: And you can definitely employ a lot of sort of critical thinking skills as well, when you're thinking about setting your learners out into the world and getting them to notice the way that media is used, when you talked about noticing nutrition, remember reading about an initiative that was done in, I think it was the city of Newcastle, where they were trying to get people more aware of their health and their nutrition. And they used this idea called nudge theory, where you're sort of trying to nudge people into the behaviors that you want them to do. And media, and social media plays a really massive part in that.
And I think it's a good activity to get your learners to recognize that, because with that, you also then start to step into that whole realm of what's true and what's fake news.
And then if this is fake news, why and what is it that the creators of it are trying to nudge you into thinking or acting on or doing or believing. And I think skills like that are incredibly important for everybody now, especially.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So much more now.
[00:12:08] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:12:09] Speaker D: I did a task with some teenage students where I set them the challenge of keeping their phones in black and white mode, but for the distance between our lesson and the next lesson. And we had been talking about social media, and they had been suggesting, I think, that it was fine, that there wasn't an issue at all. And so I was curious to see if they would use their phones in the same way or in a different way if they switched their phones to black and white.
[00:12:35] Speaker E: I don't know what black and white mode is.
[00:12:38] Speaker D: I think in the color settings of your phone, you can choose color or grayscale, black and white. So you can essentially turn your phone into a black and white device.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:12:46] Speaker D: And what was very interesting was very few of them lasted the time between the two lessons. They found that the apps, the social media apps, were far less engaging when viewed in black and white rather than color. And we got on to the point where the discussion that we had about whether or not the multimedia image images affect us or involve us or persuade us to consume information in various ways and to various extents was different or not. And I found that to be a very kind of interesting way to kind of set a challenge, which they could do outside the classroom again, for us to talk about once we got back to class.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: That's really interesting.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, getting students out and doing research and looking for things in the real world is great. And I think sort of looking at things like the use of icons, finding different icons and how they're used, logos are really interesting.
What's a logo telling you what's behind it. Looking at advertising, even if it's billboard advertising or static advertising, magazine advertising, and trying to interpret, how is it trying to influence you? Because the world is full of things that are trying to influence them in some way or other. So getting them to think about that a bit more critically, I think is really helpful.
[00:14:08] Speaker E: There was some really interesting advertising that took place in London recently, and it was for a mascara company, and they'd picked certain spots around London where they were using the public transport to emphasize how their mascara is great at giving you large lashes. So they had a particular tube station where they'd created a massive mascara brush, so that when the train came along, the train had these fake sort of eyelashes at the front which would get brushed.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: That's really cool.
[00:14:47] Speaker E: And whilst that.
No technology coming into play there, but it was an absolute TikTok sensation. And that was how they were able to promote themselves. Exactly. That's how they got the technology.
[00:15:00] Speaker D: That's so interesting that you have to build it, and it seems like a hassle, but it's actually not intended for the people who actually see it in real life. It's intended for the audience.
[00:15:09] Speaker E: The number of people passing through that particular tube station is going to be quite limited compared to the number of people who are going to see the video on TikTok. And I don't think they even needed to go along themselves to take the video. It was just passes by and it just snowballs from there.
[00:15:27] Speaker D: For some reason, I thought that was AI.
Am I wrong about that misinformation? You can't believe everything you see on.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: It's why we need multimodal literacy.
[00:15:41] Speaker D: And I took at face value the comment that, oh, this is an example of what you can do with AI these days. And I've now begun to doubt the truthfulness of even films that I see online now, because I'm simply not sure anymore.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. And I suppose everything we're talking about, about fake news and needing to be able to critically view things in this world of AI is so much more significant because there's so much stuff which can just be faked, and having that ability to think critically and interact critically with these kinds of images and artifacts is really important.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a nice idea of getting students to spot. How do you detect a faked AI image? There was this one recently of the pope, wasn't there? You're wearing a big puffy jacket.
That was really impressive and fooled a lot of people. And yet if you looked carefully, you could see the telltale things about the hands weren't quite right and writing wasn't quite right. So it's an interesting thing about how do we teach students to do that.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:16:42] Speaker E: And again, it's questioning why AI has been used to generate something to make us think this, when actually that wasn't the case at all. So again, it's applying sort of critical thinking skills and getting learners to really think about the messaging and the purpose.
[00:17:02] Speaker D: Behind it, and fact checking as well.
[00:17:05] Speaker E: And fact checking, which I think is.
[00:17:08] Speaker D: The one skill that we could definitely teach a group of students to do beyond expressing an opinion, beyond having a kind of radar for this doesn't seem quite right. Hey, let's go to a reputable news source and see whether or not this story is being reported there, because if it isn't, I should do some further digging before I make up my mind about whether this is truthful or not. And as you've been saying, this is going to become more and more critical with every passing month.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually want to jump us back to a point you mentioned previously, because I think we've had some really good discussions here around critical viewing and the sorts of texts and artifacts that students interact with in their everyday lives. But Ed or Charlote, one of you earlier mentioned this idea that the texts that students bring into the classroom are often more engaging than the texts that the teachers would.
And I really like that idea because students are interacting with these texts all the time. They're interacting with TikTok, they're interacting with YouTube.
They're looking at memes. And I wanted to ask, how can we harness these kinds of texts, which students themselves are interested in, the ones that they interact with every day, and that they are kind of experts on how can we bring that skill set and that interest into our classrooms, I'm.
[00:18:28] Speaker D: Going to give me a surprising answer.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:31] Speaker D: And just to say, I think probably the most interesting thing to do with this is not to use it in the class.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:36] Speaker D: Students, they're creating their own content in their free time on these platforms. And it's very often the case that if the lesson always involves us showing and sharing and demonstrating what we can do with these things, then we don't get very far. It's often more interesting to put all the devices away in the lesson and create a bubble where none of this stuff is being used in the lesson to talk, discuss, and, I think, focus people's attention on what's happening. So although we naturally assume that it's important to do these things in the class. Sometimes I think that content created outside of the class is a great way to motivate and energize students to do something more traditional in the class because it is important to do traditional things in the class. I don't think it's a great idea to have devices out every single lesson. People can make very compelling arguments for why there shouldn't be devices in the classroom too, by the way, and those people have got interesting things to say and are worth listening to. So the very fact that students are using this multimodality in their free time is a great motivator and they can tell us about it. They can give arguments back and forth about it without always necessarily showing it or using it in the lesson. So that's one thing that I would say for those teachers who are reluctant to open the can of worms and have their lesson swarming with technology, it's like you don't have to. It's enough to acknowledge it, to talk about it, and to give students a task which involves, for example, expressing an opinion about it or telling a story in relation to it or something like that. That's just one aspect of the whole thing. Of course, there are wonderful and very interesting things you can do using the tech itself, creating media as an exception, as a different experience from the typical language activity. So I think it's really a question of teachers are able to find whatever works best for them depending on their context and depending on their own feelings about a topic too.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: No, I really like that.
[00:20:50] Speaker E: Yeah, I can see your point. And I think we mentioned previously about how the novelty is definitely worn off because it's easy for students to access a funny video whenever they want instead of us feeling like, oh, I'm a great teacher because I've got a funny video to bring everyone in at the start of my lesson.
But I think there's still a kind of motivational value to being able to allow learners to choose what content they want to learn with. And maybe the solution to keep it relevant is that we just have to be clear on the scaffolding around that and the criteria that's needed. So if learners are going to bring their own multimedia text into the lesson, it has to tick these boxes for it to be suitable for whatever the lesson is that you've got planned. And if I think back to when I was in school, one of the subjects I did was dance and we had to as part of our GCSE. Do we still have gcses? I think we had to create a dance based on a piece of art. And so the teacher wasn't dictating what that art needed to be.
We had that autonomy to go off and discover that for ourselves and choose something that we felt we liked or resonated well with us. And from that we'd create a dance based on that piece of artwork. But there were clear criteria that needed to be met in order for that piece of art to be suitable. And maybe the same rules would apply.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: I mean, as teachers, we've been interested in encouraging students to do extensive reading for years and years. There's no reason why we shouldn't extend that to extensive viewing or extensive observation, if you like, and to validate that as well. It doesn't necessarily have to mean sort of bringing it back into the classroom or answering questions about it or anything like that, but maybe just getting students to record, keep a diary of what they've been watching, if it's in English, or maybe as a warmer to bring something in at the beginning. Here's something I really enjoyed. It's in English. I'll share it with someone in my group, and they have the right to choose whether they're going to share something or not and whether they have something to share. But I think it's good to kind of try and validate any extensive viewing or anything that they're doing independently outside of the classroom. In English is great.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And I suppose you're kind of shaping and curating that the same way you would with extensive reading.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Speaker D: I would like to offer an example, Chris, of something where I have made use of the things that students have brought to the class that worked well without having it dominate my lesson, which was my main concern. So I asked students to do something where they selected one photograph from their phone and they uploaded that to a shared space. And I made sure it was something they were happy for everyone else in the class to look at. It could be a family pet, a picnic at the weekend, a picture taken somewhere in school, something like that. The students uploaded the images, and then in the lesson, there was no more going back to the phones. We had all our images and I said, what we have here is a photo contest, and the topic of the competition is remembering Michael Jackson. And what you have to do is make a case for why your photograph is the best picture in this collection to fit this particular topic. And of course, it's a surprise and it's a very difficult task. But because the students brought the images themselves, although unbeknownst to them, they're being used in a different way. That is a motivating factor and a helpful way for them to create kind of creative links between the topic and the image which they had. And of course it involves looking at the image in a creative, critical way and seeing connections and connotations there that can be kind of contrived to link to the topic. Easier for some students to do than others, but it's great practice for developing that particular kind of creative thinking skill too.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:25:26] Speaker D: What I would say about that is if you don't do that carefully, if you say I want you to kind of come up with a good photograph for the topic of remembering Michael Jackson, then it doesn't work the same way. They spend hours looking for pictures online or creating pictures themselves for the topic. And that's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to say like how does this fit the topic? And it works if you have that freedom through constraints.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting. I really like that one.
[00:25:54] Speaker E: That sounds really fun.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of talking ELT, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to learn more about this issue and others like it.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: You can also get practical resources and more advice on this topic by down learning acquisition paper. Just follow the link in the description.
