Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

I have been interested in a multiliteracies approach to English language learning and teaching for almost a decade now. I've been blogging about it since 2010 and I gave a presentation on this for two conferences in Iowa. I decided to put this interest aside so I could complete my dissertation on another topic and search for jobs. Now that a few years have passed, I'd like to share how my interest has changed. The foundation of my interest is best represented by the Prezi I made (below) for my 2010 MIDTESOL Conference presentation: My primary reference was Stuart Selber's 2004 book Multiliteracies for a Digital Age , published by Southern Illinois University Press. While working for the Kirkwood Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (KCELT), I found some similarities between my highlighted concepts from Selber's book and the Framework for 21st Century Learning, which you can view at http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework . The third category (Infor...

Dissertations & Theses Dissertations and theses are not always the best studies, but they provide more depth into an area of inquiry than most research articles mainly because there are fewer or no restrictions on the length of the writing.  If you're not familiar with PhD dissertations, many are over 100 pages long and it's not uncommon to find ones that are over 200 pages long.  Master's theses are typically shorter than dissertations, but the research methodology is usually not as rigorous. When I was searching for literature on intensive English programs, a good proportion of the studies were dissertations and theses.  Although they are more time-consuming to read, I find that literature review in dissertations are very helpful with learning more about the current research.  I'd like to briefly review the findings of these dissertations and theses regardless of the quality of their methodology (for MA theses) for the purpose of understanding trends. To...

One of the biggest reasons multiliteracies is not implemented in the classroom is that it is difficult to assess.  And if you cannot assess your students' learning, then how do you know they are learning?  I'd like to propose a formative assessment, which is more like an activity.  It also happens to be one of my favorite multiliteracies activities that I would like to implement fully.  I have done bits and pieces of it, and that experience has helped me create this example. Purpose and Context  For the past few years multiliteracies has been a secondary research interest of mine. I will define it in the construct section of this posting.  One of the key articles I discovered made a point of concluding the implications of its investigations at the very end of the article, “And finally, there should be alignment between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Assessment criteria should include future-oriented new literacies if the latter are to become part ...

On Saturday, April 30th I presented a literature review that combines multiliteracies and second language teaching and learning for the 2011 Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Symposium at the University of Iowa. This presentation is the more theoretical complement to the more practical presentation I gave last fall for MIDTESOL in Dubuque, IA . Multiliteracies is my second research interest area, so it is a topic that I will not be investigating for my dissertation. However, I have a very strong interest in multiliteracies, especially in applying the multiliteracies approach (MLA) to the ESL or EFL classroom. When I get the opportunity to teach ESL and EFL again, I will try to implement this approach if applicable to the program. Also, when I get the opportunity to educate pre-service and in-service ESL or EFL instructors, I hope to create a unit or a course addressing multiliteracies. Here is the link to the handout for the SLA Graduate Student Symposium. ...

Here is my presentation for the 2010 MIDTESOL Conference in Dubuque, IA on Friday, October 22. Foreign Language & ESL Education, University of Iowa MIDTESOL Conference 2010" href="http://prezi.com/ih09442iln9s/incorporating-multiliteracies-into-the-esl-classroom/">Incorporating Multiliteracies into the ESL Classroom on Prezi

This previous semester at the University of Iowa, I have taken interest in media literacy, specifically information literacy in terms of online or digital information, in the context of teaching English as a second language. I was hoping to investigate into this topic for one of my classes, Reading in a Second Language, however there weren't enough peer-reviewed articles for an adequate literature review. I broadened my search to extensive reading online and came up with a few more articles, but still not enough for a satisfactory literature review. Finally, I broadened the search to online or digital reading in a second language. If interested in this broader topic, please visit the website I created for my presentation . For this posting, I will discuss how my teaching experience prompted interest in media literacy, followed by identifying who advocates and researches media literacy in general, and I will conclude by calling for research into and teaching media literacy as a...