Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2019

Digital media can convey a tremendous amount of linguistic information about discourse patterns and grammatical structures as well as clues about social interaction and values in particular communities. Language students that develop their media literacy skills not only develop useful skills of communication and inquiry, but also enhance their understanding of social and cultural practices which can improve their access to the target language community. Students will often bring with them to the classroom their previous experiences of making meanings using digital tools and in digital environments, so there is a clear need for literacy provision to be better aligned with their practices in everyday life. This paper describes and discusses the outcomes of two different media literacy educational initiatives with ESOL learners at a further education (FE) college in the United Kingdom and university students in Italy. This paper will discuss how activities such as media analysis, curation, and production can be used to enhance English Language teaching and learning. It explains the rationale for focusing on media literacy in the language classroom and how these types of pedagogic activities can contribute to the development of emergent and productive ‘Third Spaces’ (Bhabha, 1994) for learners in different settings.

I media digitali sono in grado di trasferire una notevole quantità di informazioni relative ai modelli di discorso e alle strutture grammaticali, e danno indicazioni sull’interazione sociale e i valori insiti in determinate comunità. Gli studenti di lingue che sviluppano le loro competenze mediali non accrescono soltanto abilità utili di comunicazione e di indagine, ma rafforzano allo stesso tempo la loro comprensione delle pratiche sociali e culturali, che possono agevolare il loro accesso alla comunità linguistica di riferimento.Gli studenti portano spesso con sé, in classe, le loro precedenti esperienze di costruzione di significati attraverso l’uso degli strumenti digitali e in contesti digitali, risulta pertanto necessario che l’alfabetizzazione sia allineata alle attività della vita quotidiana.Il presente articolo descrive i risultati di due diverse iniziative educative di media literacy che hanno interessato gli studenti ESOL in un istituto di formazione superiore (Further Education) nel Regno Unito e studenti universitari in Italia. L’articolo illustra come attività quali l’analisi dei media, ricerca, e produzione possano essere impiegate per rafforzare l’insegnamento e l’apprendimento della lingua inglese. L’articolo spiega, inoltre, le ragioni per le quali concentrarsi sulle competenze mediali nelle classi di lingua e come questa tipologia di attività pedagogiche possa contribuire allo sviluppo di “Third Spaces” (Bhabha, 1994), emergenti e produttivi, per studenti in contesti diversi.

Parole chiave: competenza mediale, lingua inglese, nuovi studi sull'alfabetizzazione, etnografia.

All the technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow us to access and have a critical understanding of and interact with media. These capacities allow us to exercise critical thinking while participating in the economic, social and cultural aspects of society and playing an active role in the democratic process. This concept covers different media: broadcasting, radio, press, through various channels: traditional, internet, social media and addresses the needs of all ages. (Council of the European Union, 2016, p.10)

Many educators already use media arts activities in the classroom, such as the decoding of media texts or discussing how audiences respond to different media messages. However, critical media literacy entails engaging students to challenge ‘commonsense’ assumptions of textual meanings with negotiated and oppositional interpretations, as well as exploring alternative media with oppositional and counterhegemonic representations and messages (Kellner & Share, 2007). Hall (1982) argues that media does not simply reflect reality, but instead represents it:

The active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of an already existing meaning, but the more active labor of making things mean… the message now has to be analyzed, not in terms of its manifest “message”, but in terms of its ideological structuration. (p. 64)

Critical media literacy is therefore also about creating communities of active readers and writers who will exercise various degrees of agency in deciding what textual positions they will assume or resist while engaging in complex social and cultural contexts. The process of reading or creating a text is dependent on an individual’s ability to make the symbols mean something through the mobilization of a set of cultural codes (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999). The overlapping nature of these codes can create unpredictable possible meanings, which necessitates an active stance by the reader (Smith & Riley, 2011, cited in Hobbs & He, 2015). Moving towards critical media literacy requires an understanding of literacy as a social process involving multiple dimensions, as well interactions with different technologies. It is also connected with the transformation of education and democratization of society (Keller & Share, 2007). This conceptualization is grounded in the New Literacy Studies (NLS), which offers a view of literacies as multiple, emergent, and situated within particular contexts (Ivanic, Edwards, Satchwell & Smith, 2007). New Literacy Studies represents a shift in focus from literacy as the acquisition of skills to thinking of literacy as a social practice (Street, 2012).

This paper describes and discusses the outcomes of two different media literacy educational projects with ESOL learners. The first project was at a further education (FE) college in the United Kingdom and the second with a class of third-year university students in Italy. The pedagogic activities in both of these settings involved the analysis and discussion of authentic media materials. By ‘authentic’ texts, this refers to materials that are produced for communication rather than primarily for the teaching of language (Thomas, 2014). Through using authentic materials, learners can be provided with meaningful exposure to language as it is actually used and help them develop a range of communicative competencies, as well as enhance positive attitudes towards language learning (Tomlinson, 2012).

However, exposure alone to authentic materials is not sufficient as, first, students may not be able to obtain access to the messages contained in the text, and second, students are not always aware of the strategies and techniques that they might employ to derive meaning from texts in their native language. This means that any activities accompanying texts must both capitalize on the strategies that they already utilize as well as provide guidance to learn new ones (Rogers & Medley, 1988). Therefore, at both project settings, students were supported to produce their own media materials. Their work often adopted conventions of authentic texts, but also frequently critically examined and subverted them too. Through this process, they were encouraged to develop their own methods to judge the value of seeing and understanding representations using alternative cultural positionings (Hobbs & He, 2015). The emergent outcomes from these activities are important to evaluate, since students are developing new forms of media literacy which are keyed to the emergent forms of media that they encounter on a daily basis. It is therefore vital to attempt to understand the diverse conventions of critical media literacy in order to develop educational programs in this space (Ito et al., 2009).

Previous research has highlighted the capacity of new media technologies to facilitate critical inquiry and active exploration, while stressing that this explosion of new technologies has made it possible for individuals to produce, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Roberson, 2009). However, this focus on expanding access to new technologies is limited without an accompanying effort to foster the skills and cultural knowledge to deploy these tools effectively. Many students bring with them understanding and experience of meaning-making using digital tools, so there is a need for literacy education to be aligned with their everyday practices (Westman, 2017a). Critical media literacy instruction can support the identity development of students while at the same time providing them with new opportunities in using language and knowledge. They are also empowered to develop the skills that permit them to participate in new communities of discourse (Hobbs & He, 2015).

English Language classrooms represent unique spaces in which different linguistic and cultural worlds come into contact. As a result, they offer tremendous opportunities for teachers to engage with cross-cultural differences and the social construction of areas such as gender, sexuality, and race, and thus, to help students develop linguistic and intercultural competence (Norton & Pavlenko, 2004). However, a significant challenge in responding to cultural and linguistic diversity in language classrooms is moving beyond the stereotyping of difference or celebrating diversity without examining its links to social inequality and corresponding structural or material effects. This means that pedagogic activities must be constructed on the basis of responding meaningfully to diversity (McKinney & Norton, 2008). The increasingly multilingual and multicultural nature of foreign language classrooms requires ongoing attention on the part of language teachers (Lam, 2000). It necessitates an imaginative assessment of what is possible (McKinney & Norton, 2008).

The first study occurred during the author’s doctoral studies at a further education (FE) college in the West Midlands. FE in the United Kingdom includes any study after secondary education that is not part of higher education (i.e., not taken as part of an undergraduate or graduate degree). Courses can range from fundamental mathematics and English to Higher National Diplomas (HNDs). The focus for the research was the exploration of the potential value of a digital ethnographic pedagogic approach with respect to critically reflexive learning and boundaries between information communication technologies (ICTs) and traditional curriculum areas and modes of instruction in these areas (Westman, 2017a). Over a five-week period, a filmmaking project was conducted with two classes of ESOL learners (levels A2-B2 on the CEFR scale) at the college’s Language Centre, which was a stand-alone complex in a residential area away from the main campus. One class was students aged 16–18 who were predominantly of Eastern European and North African backgrounds and been in the UK for less than a year. The other was a more diverse grouping aged 18-52 who were also recent arrivals to the UK. However, the majority already had substantial professional backgrounds in their country of origin. The author served as the primary facilitator of the class sessions during the five weeks of the project. Students created short documentary films in response to weekly themes using handheld flip-camcorders. The facilitation of an ‘ethnographic shift’ within the ESOL curricular context was not the introduction of video production alone, but rather the use of video combined with an emphasis on critical reflection and reflexivity during the production process (Westman, 2017a).

Prior to commencing the project, the author attended several class sessions in order to observe the existing pedagogic practices and behaviors, and to also consider some of the potential consequences of an external researcher entering the college setting. There were no set curricular texts or materials normally used other than an English dictionary and photocopied worksheets. The three teachers hoped that by undertaking this project, it might help to address what they identified as persistent student apathy and lack of engagement. Each week of the study was centered around a particular theme (e.g., “Being a Student”, “Britishness”) chosen by the author in consultation with the teachers. All participants were provided with an information form that explained the aims of the research and requested their consent to use their images. During the first week of the project, the author screened clips from various documentary films and conducted a debate with the students as to what elements of a film might make it a documentary.

Each week, following a brief discussion about the theme, the students then separated into small groups in order to create their videos. The videos were then screened and a discussion conducted to close the class period. During the first two weeks of the project, students usually immediately left the classroom to start filming, but in later weeks, they chose to spend time planning how they would structure their films. Although storyboarding was proposed as an activity, it was not formally promoted, so their video planning was primarily verbal. Since there were no computer labs available in the language centre, video-editing software was not used. Instead, students filmed multiple versions and then selected which ones they wanted to screen to the rest of the class. (Westman, 2017a).

Since their video production work for this project was distinctly different from their usual class activities, the students did not have clear evaluation criteria to both follow and use to monitor themselves (Westman, 2017a). On one hand, this generated some initial concern as some students remained unclear about the broader purpose of the activities (Westman, 2017a). However, it also provided opportunities for critical discussion about topics not usually covered. For example, a narration by a student about the broken coffee machine in the lounge led to a broader in-class dialogue about how many of them felt that ESOL students were marginalized at the college and not treated as well as degree students. Other students highlighted that while they found filming challenging at times, they also found it useful to think about different ideas and to introduce elements such as humor in order to try and better explain themselves (Westman, 2017a).

Bernstein’s code theory explains how one form of language, which he terms elaborated code, is favored over another, restricted code, within the structure of the school. These terms refer to different modes of language use that represent different orientations to meaning. Elaborated code takes symbolic precedence in certain contexts and is the dominant institutionalized language. Students will be accustomed to completing assignments and exams in elaborated code, which addresses curricular and learning specifications and objectives (Bernstein, 1971). ESOL students will often have experience outside of school environments engaging with and producing media in restricted code in their native language. Therefore, successful pedagogic activities need to help learners connect and work between elaborated and restricted codes as well as English and their native languages. While the course teachers noted increased verbal participation by many students -“Nice way to kick off a discussion and get the students talking and more engaged”- they felt that elements such as grammar and writing needed to be well integrated into any curriculum using video production in order to be productive. They also believed broader institutional support was necessary, especially as time was a significant factor, in order to construct the appropriate instructional scaffolding for students, such as supporting reflective practice (Westman, 2017a)

The second location was a class of students undertaking a first cycle degree program in Intercultural Linguistic Mediation. The author served as the instructor for this course during the autumn term in 2017. The second half of the course, held during the spring 2018 term and taught by another instructor, focused on linguistic mediation and translation between English and Italian. Over the three-year duration of the program, students undertake modules in Italian and at least 3 foreign languages. The expected learning outcomes are that graduates:

This class was a third-year module (English Language and Culture) for students who had not previously studied English during their degree program. However, since many of the students had taken lessons outside of the university setting, there was a significant range of language abilities represented in the class (A2-B2/C1). This presented a challenge in selecting activities that could meet the needs and interests of learners of different abilities. To do this, the class was structured into three main sections: media analysis, curation, and production. For the media analysis section, students were challenged to examine the verbal and nonverbal messages presented about culture and society by media in several English-speaking countries (USA, UK, and Australia). They reviewed how major news stories (e.g., Brexit) were covered across different media forms and different locations with respect to such issues as language and image use and representation. One student explained her topic choice for an assignment by emphasizing her personal relationship to the issue:

Among the numerous topical issues that interest and touch me, I decided to analyze the media representation of the immigration issue. I made this choice because I live near the Italian border with France, which has been dealing with a very hard situation in the last years, a tragic situation that is far from being resolved. I selected three pieces of media that focus on the immigration problem in Italy, and two pieces related to immigration in general. I chose to write especially about Italy not only because it is my country, and because I saw with my eyes the seriousness of the current events, volunteering in a refugee camp in Ventimiglia; but also because I find very interesting the fact that, over the past thirty years (a very short time if we consider what type of change we are talking about), Italy shifted from being an emigrant nation to an immigrant destination. (Westman, 2017b)

The class also discussed memes and what aspects might make them popular. They shared memes to the course Moodle site and produced their own to present to their class, as well as compared how memes are similar or different in other languages. Finally, they explored encoding and decoding in advertisements and preferred, oppositional, and negotiated readings by audiences in order to see themselves as active creators, not passive recipients, of meaning. Students debated about how ideas about national identity can emerge through representations in television and cinema (e.g., the 1995 film Independence Day).

The next section focused on curation, using the online programme Storify, which allows users to curate content from social media platforms in order to tell stories. Curation is something that was historically reserved for those who worked with physical materials in museum or library settings, but has evolved to what individuals do online every day. Drawing on examples like Twitter and Pinterest, the aim for this section was to help learners think about the different language and communicative resources that they use to find, organize, and share information with others. In doing this, they had to connect text and image in order to communicate cross-culturally and consider different ways of presenting knowledge and how to incorporate alternative viewpoints. An assignment given was for them to create a story based on the prompt “I am…?”. For example, one student, who used items such as a photo of the Bay of Naples and a video of the comedian Toto, wrote:

First of all, I put in the title “I am a Neapolitan…” and not “I am Italian”, but it does not mean I am not Italian. Of course, I feel Italian, but there some aspects and some ways of being that only Neapolitans have. That’s why, I feel different from the other people who come from all over the Italian boot. The stereotypes about Neapolitans say that we are noisy, superstitious, mafiosi and good at making pizza. But we are much more than this. Personally, I have a strange relationship with my country of origin, a kind of odi et amo. (Westman, 2017b)

Using a variety of media sources, the student addresses questions of how he views his identity as well as stereotypes which he feels are misleading or false. For their final project, students, in small groups, produced short 8-10-minute videos on topics covered during the term, although they were required to outline their ideas and gain teacher approval prior to submission. These videos could be filmed entirely by students or include edited segments from online resources such as YouTube, but all videos required some voiceover or on-camera speaking element. They were also provided in-class tutorials on using online editing software and other filmmaking resources. As there was not a specified format requested, students chose a variety of different styles and structures. One group investigated how Italians were viewed abroad in English-speaking countries and conducted interviews, while another individual constructed his video to resemble the Eurovision Song Contest program format in order to explore whether university students were media-literate.

Through this discussion of the pedagogic activities from these two settings, it can be seen that incorporating media literacy into the English language classroom can help facilitate the creation of productive and emergent ‘Third Spaces’. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha (1994) described Third Spaces as postcolonial identity spaces which are eminently heterogeneous, contradictory, and ambivalent. In these spaces, third perspectives emerge in resistance to dominant ways of seeing and limitations that are imposed by racist, classist, and other oppressive forces. In doing this, he positions Third Spaces as areas for elaborating strategies of selfhood and sites of initiation for new signs of identity and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation in the act of defining the idea of society itself (Bhabha, 1994). He writes:

Third Space, though unrepresentable in itself, . . . constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, re-historicized and read anew (p. 37).

The heterogeneity of Third Spaces facilitates the fluidity of signs and symbols (Kramsch, 2009), so they are therefore a place of invention and transformational encounters - a dynamic in-between space-that is imbued with the traces, relays, ambivalences, ambiguities and contradictions, with the feelings and practices of both sites, to fashion something different and unexpected (Bhabha, 1994). Other researchers have noted that the construction of Third Spaces in educational settings involves the merger of aspects of the ‘first’ space of students’ everyday lived experience with the ‘second’ space of the academic discourses students encounter in school (Moje et al., 2004).

At the FE college, students were provided more control over the pacing and sequencing of pedagogic activities, namely the organization and filming of their videos. They were also encouraged to explore non-traditional topics and areas of personal interest since the given themes were intentionally broad. This permitted them to draw upon aspects of their personal knowledge that were often marginalized at the Language Centre during more formal English language instruction. This was especially evident with the adult learners who had often arrived with defined professional identities that had been obscured by their language limitations (Westman, 2017a). Through the act of expressing oneself, we always say more than we think since part of the meaning of what we say is already established by our position in the social structure, by our relative power, and by the subject positions that we occupy in social encounters (Kramsch, 2009). Cultural difference is articulated in the “highly contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation” (Bhabha, 1994, p.37). As one university student observed, working with different types of media:

Is much easier and faster than writing an essay since you can write something and then insert an interview or video that goes ahead with the argument that you want to say. Or sometimes I’ll realize other things I’ve seen before, or that I think are wrong and want to look at (Westman, 2017b).

Another student, in describing how she would ‘remix’ how Italian-Americans are represented on TV program, imagined a program on ‘American-Italians’, that is, Americans living in Italy loudly mispronouncing words and ordering strange food combinations. Language teaching should give students:

The ability to understand and articulate preferred meanings by occupying identity positions in the culture of power, to negotiate and challenge preferred meanings of the culture of power through meaning making from home and alternative identity positions, and resist and refuse the meaning-making practices that the student deems oppressive. (Smith and Riley, 2011, as cited in Hobbs & He, 2015, p. 22)

The term ‘third culture’ has been proposed in order to eschew these dualities between native and non-native speakers in the language classroom. Kramsch (2009) argues that third cultures (or third places) have three characteristics:

A traditional view of literacy portrays it as a “literacy ladder” in which a learner moves through a linear acquisition process while acquiring an autonomous set of skills held and represented by the teacher (Hamilton, Tett & Crowther, 2012, p. 2). Instead, by focusing on these types of boundary experiences between language, culture, and representation in the classroom through an emphasis on media literacy, learners can become more aware of how manipulating contextual frames and perspectives through language can give them power and control (Kramsch, 2009). Third spaces permit the hybridity of languages and cultures. Teachers can try to bridge the transnational literacies of students to the literacies of school and in the process, reformulate conceptions of what is recognized knowledge in the classroom (Darvin & Norton, 2014).

Through the construction of third space, an amalgam of subject positions, of expert and inexpert are blended together so that it cannot necessarily be distinguished which voice dominates. Students are able to carve out space for themselves to establish their own voice, to become agents of their learning and authors of their own representation (Routledge, 1996; Darvin & Norton, 2014). Third Spaces are learning spaces that can be filled with productive possibilities for English language learners. They facilitate “literacy events” (Street, 2012), where meanings are shared and in which the pedagogical framing of these meanings serves as a key determinant in shaping actions (McDougall, Readman & Wilkinson, 2018). Media literacy development in the English language also supports learners to reinforce and expand upon their knowledge and skills from their native language (ACTFL, 2019). However, as it has been shown here in the two settings from this research, this requires teachers to embrace and carefully build upon the emergent language learning outcomes that this type of pedagogic approach produces (Westman, 2017a). In this sense, it should not be thought of a special one-off project. Rather, it is a constant attention to how classroom discussions, activities, and tasks assemble with the histories and imaginings of both groups and individuals, with established practices for doing further and higher education, doing media, doing literacy, teaching, learning and so on, and with other objects and memories that linger in the sites where they happen (Burnett, as cited in Potter & McDougall, 2017)

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