Glossary of Key Terms (from Paesani and Menke,2023; p. 175-212)

analyzing: Learning by connecting the content of texts to social, cultural, and historical contexts; questioning the meaning, importance, and consequences of textual content; critically reflecting on textual content and its relationship to one’s own culture, perspectives, and learning. One of the four knowledge processes of multiliteracies pedagogy.

applying: Learning by using new knowledge, skills, and understandings and by producing language in creative ways. One of the four knowledge processes of multiliteracies pedagogy.

assessment: The general processes of gathering information about a student’s learning and measuring their level of knowledge or skills.

backward design: Three-stage model of curricular planning that includes (1) identifying desired results (goals, objectives, content), (2) determining acceptable evidence (assessment plan, individual assessments), and (3) planning learning experiences (instructional activities).

communication: Understanding and interpreting written and spoken language on varied topics, communicating in meaningful and appropriate ways, taking audience and context into account. One of the five Cs of the World-Readiness Standards, revised by Kern (2003) to incorporate literacies principles (see chapter 1).

communicative competence: The ability to use language appropriately to carry out specific functions in different social situations.

communicative language teaching: A pedagogical approach that places communication and the development of students’ communicative competence at the center of instruction.

communities: Participating in multilingual communities at home and around the world for personal enjoyment and enrichment; relating to past and present worlds outside of our immediate community through textual interaction; examining the ways that language is used to capture and express ideas and experiences within those communities. One of the five Cs of the World-Readiness Standards, revised by Kern (2003) to incorporate literacies principles (see chapter 1).

comparisons: Understanding the nature of language and culture through comparisons of the language and culture studied and one’s own. One of the five Cs of the World-Readiness Standards, revised by Kern (2003) to incorporate literacies principles (see chapter 1).

conceptualizing: Learning how language forms, conventions, organization, and other features of texts work to convey meaning; unpacking texts, practicing skills and knowledge, and explicitly learning about textual features helps learners participate more fully in communication. One of the four knowledge processes of multiliteracies pedagogy.

connections: Strengthening knowledge of other disciplines through language study—art, music, film studies, history, and so forth; acquiring information and recognizing viewpoints available through the language and its cultures. One of the five Cs of the World-Readiness Standards, revised by Kern (2003) to incorporate literacies principles (see chapter 1).

conventions: One type of textual feature; the accepted ways of using different meaning-making systems (e.g., language, sounds, images, gestures) to communicate messages in different text types.

counterbalance: Attributing complementary status to both language learning and learning of academic or cultural content such that neither takes on a disproportionate role in the curriculum.

creation: Applying the language forms and cultural knowledge learned from a text to create something new.

cultural content: One type of textual feature; includes the products, practices, and perspectives represented in a text, the meanings attributed to them, and the relationships among them.

cultural products: The tangible (e.g., books, films) or intangible (e.g., rituals, laws) creations of a particular culture.

cultures: Understanding relationships between the social practices, cultural products, and perspectives of people in the foreign culture. One of the five Cs of the World-Readiness Standards, revised by Kern (2003) to incorporate literacies principles (see chapter 1).

essential questions: Open-ended questions around a topic or theme that provoke inquiry and deep thought, encourage students to consider multiple viewpoints and question assumptions, connect to prior learning and experiences, and promote transfer of learning to other contexts.

experiencing: Learning through immersion in texts, activities, and social situations; expressing thoughts, reactions, opinions, and feelings and gaining global comprehension about familiar or new experiences, objects, ideas, situations, perspectives, and ways of communicating. Does not involve deep reflection or analysis. One of the four knowledge processes of multiliteracies pedagogy.

experiencing the known: Activities in which students discuss their worlds using familiar patterns of communication and bring their cultural backgrounds, identities, and interests into the classroom.

experiencing the new: Activities that expose students to ideas, information, or situations outside or beyond their reality.

foreign language literacies: The ability to interpret and transform target language texts, engage with texts of different modalities and genres, connect language and culture, and recognize the centrality of language in understanding diverse societies and perspectives.

genre: Text types that possess particular patterns that are culturally situated and that users expect, understand, apply, and adapt.

instructional conversations: Teacher-led classroom discussions with the purpose of improving students’ proficiency and their ability to think in complex ways about textual content. Include open-ended questions, exchange of ideas, and responsive feedback similar to everyday, noninstructional conversations.

interpersonal communication: Two-way interaction and meaning negotiation in spoken, written, or signed conversations. When students interact in this mode, they explore and negotiate relationships, shared assumptions, conventions, imagination, creativity, and emotions that are grounded in their understandings of the texts they interpret.

interpretation: Understanding the gist or surface-level facts as well as critically examining cultural messages and viewpoints and the way language is used to express those messages and viewpoints.

interpretive communication: Allows a reader, listener, or viewer to construct meaning (e.g., understand, interpret, analyze) from written, audio, audiovisual, digital, or visual texts. Engaging with texts in this way includes establishing literal understanding of basic information, making inferences, and analyzing cultural products, practices, and perspectives embedded in texts. Because this is a one-way communication mode, there is no possibility of meaning negotiation.

knowledge processes: Four nonsequential, nonhierarchical activity types that compose multiliteracies pedagogy, promote students’ foreign language literacies development, and engage them in meaning design.

language: One type of textual feature; the linguistic content of texts, including grammatical forms, vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, spelling, metaphors and idiomatic phrases, pronoun referents, simple and complex sentences, and so on.

language-content integration: Language learning through academic or cultural content. Language and content are seen as complementary, with the instructional focus shifting between the two depending on learning objectives, student needs, and so on to enhance the learning of both.

learning objectives: Brief statements articulating what students will know and be able to do at the end of a learning sequence (e.g., lesson, unit, course, program) to reach a curriculum’s overarching goal(s).

literacy: The ability to read and write.

meaning design: Identifying, understanding, and analyzing patterns in the ways ideas are presented in texts and incorporating those patterns into one’s linguistic and communicative repertoire; has linguistic, sociocultural, and cognitive dimensions.

multiliteracies pedagogy: An instructional approach that applies the concept of foreign language literacies in classroom instruction; prioritizes meaningful communication around target language texts and the language forms used to express ideas within those texts.

multimodal/multimodality: The combination of written, audio, visual, or digital modes in a text.

presentational communication: Sharing information and ideas to an (often) distant audience in order to inform, explain, persuade, or narrate on various topics. Learners also demonstrate awareness of communicative conventions relevant to the text type they are presenting. There is no opportunity for meaning negotiation during oral or written presentational tasks.

summative assessment: Serves to evaluate student learning against a standard or benchmark (e.g., a rubric) at the close of a lesson or unit; seeks to determine whether students have met learning objectives.

target language text: A socially and culturally situated text created for some real-world purpose other than language learning.

text: Any concrete, observable product that communicates meaning; can be written, audio, audiovisual, visual, digital, or multimodal.

Works Cited

Paesani, Kate, and Mandy R. Menke. Literacies in Language Education : A Guide for Teachers and Teacher Educators. First edition., Georgetown University Press, 2023.