Abstract
In her recent survey of existing studies on second language (L2) education and Black/African American students, Anya (2020) posits the need for classroom-based work that will offer information on effective methodologies and curricular content to answer the personal and academic needs of this population of students and counter the negative experiences that have been reported in the literature. This case study seeks to answer this call by investigating the use of open, L2 Spanish materials grounded in the multiliteracies pedagogy Learning by Design (Kalantzis et al., 2016; Zapata, 2022) directly connected to learners’ lifeworld in beginning L2 Spanish classes at a Historically Black College in Southern United States. This work was carried out during two academic semesters, and it involved the participation of 67 students. The first source of data was a survey which probed into the participants’ perceptions of the instruction received, and their personal connections to the pedagogical resources employed. The multimodal products created by the students constituted the second source of data. First I offer a brief description of the adopted practices and tasks, as well as of the pedagogical framework on which they were based. The second part is devoted to a discussion of the study’s results, including the analysis of the responses to the questionnaire and the exploration of learners’ artifacts based on Zhang and Yu’s (2023) dimensions of digital multimodal composing competence. I conclude with instructional recommendations and suggestions for future research.
Presenters
Gabriela C. ZapataAssociate Professor in Education, School of Education, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Inclusive Second Language Education; Multiliteracies; Black/African American Students; Multimodal Composing
