This study explores the implementation of the multimodality theory for high school students of English as a
Foreign Language in a Brazilian context. This implementation was based on a study conducted by Almeida
(2011), in which she proposed a multimodality framework for teaching multimodal texts. By using the
framework, Almeida tried to establish a bridge between a theory designed to analyze visual structures (e.g.,
Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) and its adaptation to the educational context (e.g., Browett, 2007; Jewitt, 2008;
Oliveira, 2006; Riesland, 2005).
(…)
In Brazil, the importance of implementing activities in the classroom that focus on literacy, multiliteracy,
multimodality and hypertext is highlighted by the Ministerio da Educação Secretaria de Educação Básica’s (Ministry of Education District of Basic Education) Curricular Orientations for Secondary School-OCEMs
(2006), an official curriculum document. This document guides the curriculum of all schools in Brazil and it
includes suggestions about the teaching of multimodality. To achieve this goal, the grammar of visual design
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) is seen as an important starting point for the professional learning of teachers
in visual literacy because it can help them understand how to read images and associate both kinds of text,
visual and written.
(…)
Thus, we applied this approach in two classrooms where we could observe whether knowledge of
multimodality theory affected the students’ reading of the texts. To this end, we prepared two activities
focusing on the same multimodal text; the first activity was given to students before teaching them
multimodality theory and the second one after instruction.
The picture used for Exercise 1 and 2 was the same. It was the picture of a man whose face looked like the
face of a fish. The man was looking up and was wearing a blue shirt. At the bottom of the picture, centered
in relation to the picture, and in capital letters was the following text: “STOP CLIMATE CHANGE BEFORE IT
CHANGES YOU.” Below the text and centered in relation to the text, there was a panda picture with the WWF
acronym below it followed by the text “for a living planet” in lowercase.
(…)
The students participated in the activities and had to point to us what aspects they had noticed in the text
for the linguistic dimension (the colors, the size of the pictures, the way pictures were disposed in the text,
their background, framing, degree of salience and eye contact, distance). For the socio-cultural dimension,
they had to be able to answer wh- questions (who, why, where, when, which attitudes and values) and
observe the emotions, situations, relations, symbols, power relations, characters and cultures involved in the
picture. Finally, for the situational dimension, they had to analyze who created the picture, who it was
targeted at, where it appeared, how much background knowledge was required to understand the picture,
and its explicit and implicit ideological values.
(…)
Overall, we noticed that instruction on the theory helped students to understand better the context around
them, mainly the socio-cultural context, and it helped students to improve their reading because the
answers given before instruction on multimodality were very simple and did not point to a critical reading;
they only focused on what was on the surface of the text like “the text tells about environment,”
“if man does
not stop destroying the environment, he will die” or “the man will become a fish if he keeps on destroying
the environment”.
The answers given after those classes were more critical, the students used some concepts from the theory
and were able to point to some aspects of the three dimensions, like who was in the picture, what the
writer’s intention was; they also talked about the colors and the background of the picture pointing to the
dark color, why the writer had used that image and not another one, they associated the man’s face to the
words accompanying the visual.
(…)
The situational dimension seemed to be easier for students to understand and write about, mainly when it
guided them to reflect about some aspect of production, circulation and consumption of the images. The
socio-cultural context of images emphasized questions related to worldview, emotion, attitudes, values and
power relationships and was easy for learners to understand. In contrast, students did not explore the
linguistic aspect of the pictures; they did not mention colors, size, focus, background, or sharpness, perhaps
because in everyday classes the students are not encouraged to talk about them.
(SOUZA, V.G. & ALMEIDA, D..Towards a Multimodal Critical Approach to the Teaching of EFL in Brazil. Published in Kamhi-Stein, L., Diaz-Maggioli, G., & de
Oliveira, L. C. (Eds.) (2017). English language teaching in South America: Policy, preparation, and practices. Multilingual Matters).