Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Christopher Knapp, Weblog Entry #1

While I had considered the use of graphic novels within my own English language arts classes, what stood out to me most is how effective the use of graphic novels and/or other forms of visual text could be to ESL learners within the classroom.

In my prior experience with graphic novels, and in courses focused specifically on graphic novels that I took part in during my undergraduate degree, it also seemed as if graphic novels and the ability to ‘properly’ read a graphic novel required a degree of knowledge and expertise that was more advanced that what your average reader might possess; however, in reading this article, it came to my realization that while the degree of textual literacy and its difficulty might change depending on the graphic novel, the visual literacy and the skills necessary to interpret the images are such that it can be approached by almost any reader at any level (with the exception of small children). In this sense, what the article did most for me was change my perception of how one might read a graphic novel, and that it is possible to simply ‘read’ the story by simply viewing the images alone.

In relation to this idea of reading a graphic novel visually, rather than textually, I also found the use of graphic novels as a scaffolding tool to launch the students into a visually driven project/storyboard to be quite interesting, as it allowed students to effectively tell a story (through a series of pictures), without having to fully rely upon a strong textual narrative. In this sense, even for native English-speaking students, this kind of project has students thinking “outside of the box” in terms of what they are used to a story being, and in turn has them considering how they might tell a story through a visual mosaic; in a way, this allows students to tell a story through their own ‘eyes’, rather than their words.

Though Frey and Fisher happened to use graphic novels as their form of visual literacy in which to engage the students with, I think that this article raises the idea that any form of visual literacy, not just graphic novels, can be used as a means to engage students with English language learning and to increase their abilities not only in their language development, but also the skills needed to create and produce effective and meaningful narratives. With this in mind, I was left with the curious notion of what other forms of visual literacy might be effectively used in the classroom. Considering the ever-advancing growth of the Internet and Internet culture in the past two decades, might Internet comics, memes, or other visual materials be a more effective tool in which to engage our students? Though I have no definitive answer to this question, it is certainly one that I will continue to pursue in my own teaching practice.