Visual storytelling comes in many forms (e.g. films, comics, photographs, commercials) and is used for a range of purposes (e.g. to entertain, inform, persuade). Technological advances are enabling non-specialists to be consumers and producers of these works. Although many people are growing up surrounded by visual works, this does not mean that…

The following article explores how one researcher blended verbal and visual literacies to disrupt conceptualizations of traditional qualitative research. Engaging visual modalities as a research tool, the author invites readers into an a/r/tographical multimodal post qualitative journey that deeply explores the power and value of visual research.…

Courses: This unit activity is suited for courses with research and source citation components, such as the Basic Communication; Interpersonal, and Organizational Communication courses. Objectives: Students will (a) visually interpret and analyze instances of plagiarism; (b) revise their work to use proper citations and reduce instances of…

In a world increasingly saturated with images, the visual aesthetic dimension should play a more important role in the educational processes. Furthermore, classroom walls could be considered valuable resources to introduce visual literacy among children and teachers. However, Chilean educational policies tend not to pay much attention to visual…

Astronomy classes that teach students to read and write images, diagrams, and plots offer an ideal venue to teach visual literacy.

This study begins with the assumption that visual and related literacies are essential frameworks to foster not only students' learning of visual communication principles, but also 21st century skills such as creative problem solving and self-directed learning. We focus on assignment directions as a particular instructional component. In contrast…

The present article explores the idea of using movies in EFL classrooms to develop students' writing skill. In this qualitative study, 15 EFL learners were engaged in different writing activities in a contextualized form of movies, meaning that the films acted as text-books, and activities were designed based on the contexts of the films. Taking…

Visual texts are part of everyday communication and they have the potential to carry multiple layers of meaning. This complexity is what makes them an ideal resource not only for language learning, but also for developing learners' intercultural communicative competence and cultural awareness. Cultural meanings are not locked into these materials;…

This article discusses the potential and challenges of teaching a second-semester German class with Simon Schwartz's graphic novel "drüben!" (2009) alongside a traditional textbook. While the class explored linguistic, literary, and cultural-historical aspects of "drüben!," a GDR-themed family memoir, the focus here is on those…

This paper is concerned with multimodal literacy involving the different kinds of knowledge required to fully access texts with multiple semiotic resources used in reading comprehension test tasks. Such literacy requirements have not drawn researchers' attention to date, mainly because the foreign language teaching and testing project has…

Working within a multiliteracies framework, this paper moves beyond the traditional concerns with comprehension of a video text or the use of video for communicative purposes and demonstrates how a film clip might be used in a language classroom to explore the meaning-making process in film. Specifically, I investigate how language, filmic…

The research was conducted to investigate the role of Pictures as the teaching media in improving the Second Graders' English vocabulary at SD Pangudi Luhur, Jakarta in Academic Year 2016/2017. To achieve the objective, the data were collected through the tests, questionnaires and observer's sheet. The respondents consisted of 25 students. The…

This article explores the connection between critical reading and Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action. It proposes that Habermas's criteria used for evaluating validity claims in communicative action can be applied in reading texts critically. Analyses of different types of texts are presented to show how critical reading is done in a…

In this technologically advanced environment, users have become highly visual, with television, videos, web sites and images dominating the learning environment. These new forms of searching and learning are changing the perspective of what it means to be literate. Literacy can no longer solely rely on text-based materials, but should also…

Higher education has traditionally privileged language-based text as evidence of students' levels of critical thinking and literacy. Twenty-first century education at all levels however, has focused on multimodal literacies and how educators can engage students who are seeing the world through diverse representations and a myriad of forms. Many…