Publisher's Synopsis
Advocating an effective pedagogy that puts a multiliteracies framework at the center of the world languages curriculum and develops learners' abilities to operate between languages, this text brings together college-level curricular innovations and classroom projects that address differences in meaning and worldviews expressed in learners' primary and target languages. The text Multiliteracies in World Language Education shows how the implementation of a multiliteracies-based approach brings coherence to language programs, and how the framework can help to accomplish the goals of higher education in general and of language education in particular. First chapter focuses on practices and challenges that relate to multilingualism and education in the African continent. Second chapter presents a case study of how an international/interculturalcommunication-focused program offered by a university in Australia responds to complex landscape more adequately. In third chapter, we trace language policies in Kenya's formal education sector since 1963, drawing parallels between the prevailing policies and the patterns of creative writing. Fourth chapter makes a contribution to the growing body of work on the paradigmatic description of context of situation. Fifth chapter analyzes experimental research on implicit learning using linguistic stimuli, and proposes five key procedures of a framework for empirical studies of implicit learning. Sixth chapter focuses on two particular factors that strongly affect achievement of literacy in multilingual contexts- educational policies and societal attitudes. The aim of seventh chapter is to examine the extent to which EFL learners' proficiency can be predicted based on lexical competence with a focus on their vocabulary size. Eighth chapter deals with language for specific purpose (LSP) performance assessment in Asian call centers. Ninth chapter explores metacultural competence as a key competence that enables interlocutors to communicate and negotiate their cultural conceptualizations. Following a critique of current definitions of information literacy in tenth chapter, we argue for a critical information literacy for navigation through textual and ideological complexity and, diversity, ambiguity and multiplicity. Eleventh chapter explores the implications of recommendations for introductory FL courses, arguing in favor of a pedagogy of multiliteracies as one pathway toward curricular reform. Last chapter focuses on language education and multiliteracies.
