Abstract:
Multimodal Discourse is a theory of communication in multimedia. The notion of modes refers to semiotic resources which allow the simultaneous realization of discourses and types of (inter)action. Media are the material resources being used for the production such as music, language, and images. This study examined Iranian EFL learners’ perception of multimodal texts. The objective of the study was to examine how Iranian EFL learners utilized their general literacy practices and multimodal repertoires to develop their meaning-making process. The participants were 18 intermediate EFL learners attending Iran Language Institute (ILI), who were exposed to advertisement materials. They were asked to reconstruct their perceptions both visually and verbally. The participants’ responses were analyzed according to the social semiotics model suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001). Results revealed that the participants made contextualized perceptions of the advertisement materials indicating their sociocultural framework. Moreover, applying multimodal knowledge, the students promoted their learning status via transformative self-affected strategies. Multimodal/multiliteracies pedagogy could promote EFL students' critical literacy practices to develop new worldviews and question the imposing discursive moments.
Machine summary:
The objective of the study was to examine how Iranian EFL learners utilized their general literacy practices and multimodal repertoires to develop their meaning-making process.
Multimodal/multiliteracies pedagogy could promote EFL students' critical literacy practices to develop new worldviews and question the imposing discursive moments.
In fact, due to the progress of multimedia, knowledge is not limited to reading and writing; rather, it is the potential to give meaning and to perceive various dispositions of the creation of meaning in different textual and contextual associations of disciplines or modes (Gee, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996).
Therefore, one of the primary points for EFL teachers to consider might be the strategic way to insert different modes of texts, tasks, and practices that can corroborate the activation of EFL students' background knowledge, and link it to the new information (Ajayi, 2011; Bezemer & Kress, 2015).
In other words, this study endeavors to see the way EFL learners negotiate meaning while facing an advertisement, as well as to elucidate their perception of it while engaging in multimodal texts.
Instruments Cyrus Cylinder Pen Advertisement was used as a multimodal text to teach and practice the literacy skills.
Furthermore, the fact that the language learners created new worlds and form new personality features indicates that there is a reciprocal connection between the students' interpretations and textual modes in such a way that multimodal texts both shape and are shaped by the learners.