Keynote Speaker
Fei Victor LIM
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
April 20th 9:30-10:30
The Case for Educational Semiotics in English Language Teaching
Fei Victor Lim
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Educational semiotics is the study of signs and meaning-making in contexts of teaching and learning (Unsworth, 2008). Educational semiotics explores how students learn and teachers teach using multimodal semiotic resources. It includes the study of knowledge representations in textbooks and learning resources, the development of multimodal literacy (Kress & Jewitt, 2003; Lim & Tan-Chia, 2023) in students as well as the orchestration of embodied and multimedia resources to design conducive learning experiences in the classroom. Educational semiotics is about understanding how students learn through meaning-making with multimodal resources, and how teachers design learning experiences with multimodal – embodied and digital – semiotic resources (Lim, 2021). Educational semiotics follows from Kress’ social semiotics (Kress, 2010), which built on the theoretical foundations of Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Theory (Halliday, 1978). In this keynote, I discuss the tenets of educational semiotics in relation to examples from my research. The underpinnings in social semiotics, which are expressed as tenets in educational semiotics, include a semiotic awareness in the teacher's embodied teaching in the design of the learning experience, recognising learning as design, teaching multimodal literacy and valuing students’ lifeworld literacies.
References
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Jewitt, C. (2009) (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London and New York: Routledge.
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality – A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge.
Kress, G. and Jewitt, C. (2003) (Eds.). Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.
Lim, F. V. (2021). Designing Learning with Embodied Teaching: Perspectives from Multimodality. New York and London: Routledge.
Lim, F. V. & Tan-Chia, L. (2023). Designing Learning for Multimodal Literacy: Teaching viewing and representing. Taylor & Francis.
Unsworth, L. (2008). Multimodal Semiotics: Functional Analysis in Contexts of Education. New York: Continuum
Unsworth, L. (Ed.). (2020). Learning from Animations in Science Education: Innovating in Semiotic and Educational Research. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Biodata
Fei Victor Lim is Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He researches and teaches on multiliteracies, multimodal discourse analyses, and digital learning. His expertise is in multimodality in education, with a focus on multimodal literacy, multimodal discourse analysis, and digital learning. He is interested in how and what we should teach learners in today's digital and multimodal age. He is guided by his conviction that literacy education must be future-oriented and should progress with the evolving contemporary communication landscape.
Victor is an editor of Multimodality and Society and an associate editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Computers and Composition, and Designs for Learning. He is also author of the book, Designing Learning with Embodied Teaching: Perspectives from Multimodality, and lead author of the book, Designing Learning for Multimodal Literacy: Teaching Viewing and Representing, both published in the Routledge Studies in Multimodality.