The Language Magazine – Lina Sun
“The recent introduction of the Common Core State Standards in the U.S. and their emphasis on teaching with authentic functional texts that we use daily, such as magazine articles, websites, labels, emails, and menus, is reminiscent of communicative language-teaching methodologies. Though competence in reading with the aim of understanding all everyday and business-related texts in the target language is important, it should be our aim as educators to promote critical engagement with literature by linking reading to students’ daily lives and world knowledge to make them lifelong readers. Beyond that, meaningful transaction with literature fosters holistic learning of a new language while offering new insights, ideas, and excitement to young people. Students can develop language competence and social skills engaging with literary texts of all forms and genres: novels, poetry, drama, films, picture books, comics, and graphic novels. Today, literacy is no longer restricted to the canonical fictional texts but involves visual art forms as well. The New London Group (1996) developed the concept of multiliteracies focusing on different modes of representation. They noted that the visual mode of representation is powerful and closely related to language. Multiliteracies also create a different kind of pedagogy in which “language and other modes of meaning are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve their various cultural purposes.'”(more)