From Language Skills to Literacy

Broadening the Scope of English Language Education Through Media Literacy

Csilla Weninger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351839884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The narrowing of English language education curriculum in many contexts has negatively impacted classroom teaching and learning. High-stakes standardized testing, scripted curricula, and the commodification of English have converged to challenge socially meaningful classroom literacy instruction that promotes holistic development. Although in different ways, these factors have shaped the teaching of English as both first and second language.

How can English educators respond? This book argues that the first step is to take account of the broader policy, political and cultural landscape and to identify the key constraints affecting teachers, students and parents. These will set the broad parameters for developing local pedagogic approaches, while still recognizing the constraints that actively push against them. Using Singapore English language teaching as a case study, this book illustrates how this process can unfold, and how media literacy principles were vernacularized to design English classroom pedagogies that stretched the bounds of what is acceptable and possible in the local context.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figure
• List of tables
• List of appendices
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 English language and literacy education: a historical overview
• 3 Media literacy: key ideas and connections to English literacy education
• 4 Challenges to a literacy approach to teaching English
• 5 Bridging theory, curriculum and pedagogy: developing a framework for media literacy through English
• 6 A contextual look at the media literacy dimensions in pedagogic practice
• 7 Developing and implementing the media literacy unit in Eastridge Secondary School
• 8 The question of authenticity: students’ experiences with school media/literacy education
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Observation sheet for coding classroom data (adapted from the Singapore Pedagogy Coding Scheme (Luke, Freebody, Cazden, & Lin, 2004))
• Appendix 2: Teaching package for expository writing, Eastridge Secondary School
• Appendix 3: Transcription conventions
• Index