S/R 5:  “Embedding Digital Literacies in English Language Teaching: Students’ Digital Video Projects as Multimodal Ensembles”

Karina Juarez, 08/06/18

HAFNER, CHRISTOPH A. “Embedding Digital Literacies in English Language Teaching: Students' Digital Video Projects as Multimodal Ensembles.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 4, 2014, pp. 655–685. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43268012.

SUMMARY: 
In this article, Christoph A. Hafner argues that as a result of recent developments in digital technologies, new genres as well as new contexts for communication are emerging.  The article describes an undergraduate course in English for science at a university in Hong Kong, which incorporated elements of digital literacies.  The analysis shows that students met the challenge of writing for an authentic audience by combining a range of modes to develop an effective rhetorical “hook” and appropriate discoursal identity in their efforts to appeal to their audience (655).  The students in Hafner’s study were assigned to produce a digital video scientific documentary shared through YouTube with a non-specialist audience and a written lab report, designed for a specialist audience.  This study investigates the first task, where students shared a video through YouTube.  Hafner defines the term called new literacy studies and states that according to scholars such as Barton, Gee, and Street, “literacy is more than a mere set of cognitive skills located in individual minds, because it is socially situated in the contexts of literacy events.  Different literacy events call for different kinds of reading and writing: (657). The process of designing involves rhetorical strategies in the design of multimodal ensembles, where strategies are meant to realize the designer’s communicative intent.  In one of the students’ productions, Hafner found that the students’ video evokes a drama which tells a personal story.  In order to catch the attention of the audience, the students present their topic as an investigation of a personal issue, and they use an overarching narrative to unify the documentary.  The documentary follows 2 students who believe that they have become sick and it follows the students as they go to the library to do research and form their hypothesis and collect data.  In attempting to manage this blend of narrative and scientific report the students have created a script, which records their conversation and which shifts between the different pragmatic demands of the language of conversation and the science of language (676). The students used music in order to make their documentary accessible and less intimidating for a non-specialist audience. The story is told through visuals and with multiple camera angles. At times, the footage is a bit bumpy, but this fits well for 2 students who are on an adventure. Interestingly, the narrator role is prominent, in the style of a participatory documentary with documentary makers participating actively in the narrative.  Viewers are invited to identify with the protagonists and follow along with their story.  According to Hafner, this case was participatory, because the narrator became the focal point of the video and conveyed a one-sided point of view.  At the same time the video project opened up many interesting alternative modes of expression for students and it also provided students with many opportunities for spoken and written language practice (680).

RESPONSE:
This article is very insightful because it makes a compelling case that digital literacy practices are becoming a part of some composition courses.  It is important for students to use adequate means of composing and producing digital videos and make appropriate design choices.  Something that I found interesting when reading this article is that language played a very prominent role in students’ multimodal ensembles, and that students dedicated a lot of time to writing their scripts and presenting and recording their narration.  I think that it is obvious that students were aware of the rhetorical conventions such as audience, purpose, and medium, that completing their projects required.  In the example I described in the summary part, I think that it is very creative that students were able to assume the role of narrator and invite their audience to follow along with the message that their video was attempting to convey.  In terms of how this relates to digital identity, I think that when students are composing with technology, and engaging in multimodal composition, they choose to appropriate a discourse by using semiotic resources to meet the needs of the rhetorical situation.  As Hafner states, “multimodal composition is a matter of appropriating a discourse which goes beyond the use of language” (657).  This quotation made me think about how an integral component of digital identity involves students using technology to design a project that is appropriate for their audience and context. 

QUOTATIONS:

“Multimodal composition is a matter of appropriating a discourse, which goes beyond the use of language and includes ways of acting, interacting, feeling, believing, valuing and using various sorts of objects, symbols, tools, and technologies to recognize yourself and others as meaning and meaningful in certain ways” (657).

“Developing academic literacy means understanding the ways of thinking and valuing of the specialist discourse, and learning to assume an unfamiliar identity” (658).