Questão de InglêsInterpretação de texto | Reading comprehension e Ensino da Língua Estrangeira Inglesa

   An emphasis on the development of literacy as a
fluid concept (Knobel and Lankshear, 2014) is one of
the most recent advances in twenty-first-century
education. To conceptualize literacy, the ability of the
learner to make use of language takes precedence in
typical Western educational systems. However, as
Kern highlights, “literacy is more than a set of
academic skills” (2000, 23). It varies depending on the
social context and is embedded in cultural practice
(Paesani et al. 2016).

   Therefore, in order to define it, we must take into
consideration the set of resources, sociocultural
practices and competences––beyond reading and
writing––that enable student interaction, critical
thinking, the drawing of conclusions and the
application of knowledge to curricular areas and realworld situations (New London Group 1996; Kern
2000; American Association of School Librarians
(AASL) 2011; Cooper et al. 2012; Kucer 2014;
Paesani et al. 2016; Reyes-Torres 2018; Warner and
Dupuy 2018). As such, the multimodal training
approach that we propose for the FL class stems from
Kern’s notion of literacy, first, “as a process of creating
and transforming knowledge” (2000, 29), and second,
“as a matter of engaging in the ever-developing
process of using reading and writing as tools for
thinking and learning, in order to expand one’s
understanding of oneself and the world” (40). This
involves paying careful attention to language, while
also developing a critical awareness of the
relationships between texts, images, discourse
conventions and sociocultural and digital contexts.

   In sum, and in consonance with Kern and other
scholars such as the NLG (1996), Steve Kucer (2014),
Maria Brisk (2015), Paesani et al. (2016) and Shari
Tishman (2018), we define literacy as a dynamic and
multidimensional concept whose main aim is to
provide twenty-first-century learners with the language
skills, visual thinking strategies and dialogic attitudes
that are necessary to develop the knowledge that
allows them to grasp and evaluate information,
organize ideas, exchange perspectives, construct
meaning and reflect critically on a variety of
sociocultural contexts. In order to foster such a
multidimensional approach to literacy in EFL and
implement it as an organizing principle (Kress 2010;
Serafini 2014), it is necessary that teachers become
acquainted with the three dimensions that both Kern
(2000) and Kucer (2014) acknowledge as the key
components: a) cognitive; b) conceptual; and c)
sociocultural. 

   These dimensions constitute a field of forces that
complement one another and are equally important in
the process of both teaching and learning, and they
also illustrate the multiple facets and fluid nature of
literacy.

Adapted from: FERNÁNDEZ, Teresa; REYES-TORRES, Agustín;
FERNÁNDEZ, Pilar. A multimodal approach to foster the
multiliteracies pedagogy in the English as a Foreign Language
context. ATLANTIS: Journal of the Spanish Association of AngloAmerican Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 94–119, 2020. Available at:
https://www.atlantisjournal.org/index.php/atlantis/article/view/741.
Accessed on: Mar. 21, 2025.