Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 7: 206229, 2008

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN 1534-8458 print / 1532-7701 online
DOI: 10.1080/15348450802237822
HLIE 1534-8458 1532-7701 Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Vol. 7, No. 3-4, June 2008: pp. 140 Journal of Language, Identity, and Education
Meaning-Making, Multimodal
Representation, and Transformative
Pedagogy: An Exploration of Meaning
Construction Instructional Practices in an
ESL High School Classroom
Meaning Construction in an ESL Classroom AJAYI
Lasisi Ajayi
San Diego State UniversityImperial Valley
This study was an exploration of how high school language learners and their
teacher jointly constructed word meanings through multimodal representation and
the sociopolitical reality of learners lives as mediating factors in the context of
simultaneous multiple learning activities. Thirty-three high school Advanced ESL 3
students were taught using a political text, photographs, and a campaign video clip.
Using a variety of learning activitiesmeaning guessing, campaign advertisement,
and cartoon strips; group and whole-class activitieslearners negotiated meanings
of selected vocabulary items and phrases in the text. A close analysis of the stu-
dents scripts revealed that they used multimodal resources as a tool to convey their
identity/subjectivity in meaning-making engagements. I recommend a meaning-
making theoretical framework and classroom practices that link English language
learners with the sociocontextual frame of learning, critique and challenge social
power relations between migrant English learners and the broader society, and
emphasize transformation as the goal of pedagogical processes in the classroom.
Key words: ESL teacher, meaning-making theory, word meaning, participatory
pedagogy, transformative pedagogy, visual literacy
Word meaning is a crucial aspect of ESL curriculum that high school language
learners grapple with as they struggle to appropriate the lexico-semantic
Correspondence should be sent to Lasisi Ajayi, Division of Education, San Diego State University
Imperial Valley, 720 Heber Avenue, Calexico, CA 92231-2403. E-mail: lajayi@mail.sdsu.edu
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 207
meaning-making systems of academic English (Starfield, 2004; Toohey, 2003) to
further their studies and position themselves as effective users of the language.
For many English language learners, a decline in word-meaning scores
(Department of Education, 1999, p. 19) usually signals a poor performance in
English language learning and other school subjects. Perhaps students abysmal
performance should not come as a surprise, as theoretical and pedagogical
practices of meaning making tend to emphasize word recognition, word analysis,
and literal comprehension of lexical items (Gee, 2000).
Gee (2000) suggests that students poor performance in reading may be due to the
fact that learners do not learn to use social languages for learning within sociocultur-
ally recognizable and meaningful academic discourses (p. 413). Gee (2000, 2001)
asserts that literacy as taught in many schools focuses on a narrow interpretation of
reading as psycholinguistic processing skills (Gee, 2001, p. 714). Thus, instruc-
tional practices tend to focus on second-language acquisition as a mental process and
conceptualize learners as decontextualized and autonomous (Atkinson, 2002;
Donato & McCormick, 1994). Obviously, such an approach does not seem to take
into account the complex relationship between relations of power, identity, and
language learning (Norton, 1995, p. 17) among learners and the broader society.
Thus, this study starts with the position that vocabulary development and
meaning making should be taught within a socio-contextual theoretical and
pedagogical framework that integrates English language learners and the broader
contexts of learning (Norton, 1995, 1997, 2000). This viewpoint is consistent
with Nortons advocacy that a second-language acquisition (SLA) theory needs
to question and challenge how relations of power in the social world affect
social interaction (Norton 1995, p. 12) between language learners and the
broader society. To achieve this goal, Auerbach (1995) suggests participatory
pedagogy, where the teacher provides students a space to discover their own
knowledge, create new knowledge, and act on this knowledge (p. 16). The aims
of such a pedagogy are (a) to allow students involvement in curriculum
processes and thus prepare them to raise questions about the inequalities in the
broader society; and (b) to facilitate dialogue between the teacher and students in
ways that allow learners to investigate the contexts of their lives and put their
experiences at the core of curriculum.
Different approaches to literacy (particularly Auerbach, 1995, 1996, 2000;
Canagarajah, 1993; Freire, 2000; Gee, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007; Luke 1996;
Norton, 1995, 1997, 2000; Norton & Toohey, 2001, 2004; Phillipson, 1992,
1999; Shor & Freire, 1987) have explored the relationship between language
learning and the broader society. This body of work stresses that language is
always used in relationship to contexts and construal of contexts that are social
and cultural. For example, they contend that people give and take meaning
through the lenses of their social and cultural identities. Norton and Toohey
(2004) is representative of the perspective of the critical theorists:
208 AJAYI
Language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a
practice that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways language learners
understand themselves, their histories, their social surroundings, their histories, and
their possibilities for the future. (p. 1)
Hence, critical theorists posit that SLA theorypractice dynamics should pay
close attention to the interconnection and interaction among politics, power,
language, and pedagogical practices. In particular, Norton (2000) suggests the
need for researchers and teachers to understand the impact of prevailing social
structures in contexts of learning English as a second language (ESL) by examin-
ing the inequitable relations of power (p. 21) between learners and the broader
society. In essence, for critical theorists, some of the fundamental questions
become: How do language learners become conscious of themselves and the
social possibilities available to them? How do ESL pedagogical practices connect
language learning and use to issues of power, equity, and social justice? How can
ESL pedagogy be deployed in ways that stimulate students to use their life
situations, perspectives, and experiences to construct their own identities/
subjectivities? How do the changes in social and material affordances of the 21st
century open up possibilities for students to remake texts by asserting their own
identities through multimodal engagement?
These are some of the fundamental questions that researchers of literacy and
SLA need to address. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how
language learners in high schools use visual representations and the social
conditions of their lives to construct meanings that reflect their lived experiences.
The hope is that this study will shed some light on some vitally important issues
of adolescent English learners subjectivities, the pluralistic socialcultural con-
texts of learning English, and the potential for transformative learning afforded
by the use of multiliteracies/multimodality perspective to complement critical
ideological pedagogy, particularly in the world where public communication
texts are becoming increasingly multimodal. Weedon (1997) defines subjectivity
as the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her
sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relations to the world (p. 32).
With this construct, ESL pedagogy becomes a site of struggle over what to
teach and how to teach. This is why critical theorists are faced with the task of
designing pedagogical practices that encourage ESL students to challenge
linguistic rules of use that limit learners possibilities for full and equitable social
and cultural participation (New London Group, 1996; Norton, 2000). The
pioneering research of Knobel and Lankshear (2007), the New London Group
(1996), and Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) in new literacies strongly suggests
that the pedagogy of multiliteracies/multimodality can be used as a tool to
facilitate transformative goals in meaning-making classrooms for English
language learners. This is because this pedagogy conceptualizes literacy practices
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 209
as multiple and diverse across cultures and contexts (Kress & Street, 2006). The
enormous possibilities afforded by multimodal resources to promote transformative
instructional practices in ESL classrooms are further explicated below.
MEANING MAKING, SEMIOTIC RESOURCES,
AND TRANSFORMATIVE GOALS
The confluence of events such as increasing multilingual and multicultural
school settings and advancement in technologies of communications has resulted
in a plurality of textual forms; consequently, language learning and literacy must
account for the different contexts of language use, multiplicity of discourses, the
possibilities for designed meaning, and possible multiple readings and interpreta-
tions of a text (Corbett, 2003; Jewitt, 2005; New London Group, 1996). By text, I
mean different genres such as reports, newspapers, pictures, songs, manuals,
textbooks, narratives, procedures, legal documents, spoken or written words, and
the different text types associated with electronic multimedia. These diverse text
types are characteristically produced by different cultures and thus lend
themselves to intercultural and cross-social interpretations (New London Group,
1996).
Jewitt contends that the relationship between image, language, spatiality, and
typography associated with burgeoning diverse text-typesafforded by new
multimedia technologieschanges both the shape of knowledge and the
practices of language and literacy learning. These transformations are producing
far-reaching implications in the kinds of literacy practices that English language
learners need to acquire to become productive citizens. Kress and Street (2006)
summarize the fundamental questions for teachers and students in these shifting
times: How do they (new media, modes and messages) interact, what becomes
possible for whom, where is power likely to shift, who is likely to gain and who
is likely to lose, and what is our role as academics in all that? (p. ix). Following
Luke (1996), power is used in this study to refer to the enhanced action with
influence and effect (p. 313) on what constitutes not only knowledge but also
the pedagogy employed to achieve it in ESL classroom settings.
To address at least some of these important questions, Gee (2000, 2001, 2003,
2007) proposes a new view of literacy and language learning as social achieve-
ments ingrained in social practices: Knowing about social practice always
involves recognizing various distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing,
feeling, knowing, and using various objects and technologies that constitute the
social practice (Gee, 2003, p. 15). Gee suggests that literacy practices are
essentially social activities conducted during social interactions, and that the
social practices around how texts are analyzed, decoded, negotiated, and
interpreted by both teachers and students help situate meanings of specific words
210 AJAYI
within individuals embodied experiences and perspectives. Gee concludes that
meaning making involves learning how to situate (build) meanings (Gee, 2003,
p. 26) in different domains, be they videogames, computers, movies, television,
visual images, literature, and so on.
In these domains, authors increasingly deploy the resources of language,
image, spatiality, and digitality interactively and independently to compose
diverse text types and thus textually position readers (Jewitt, 2005; Unsworth,
2001/2004). Therefore, in everyday communication, the choice of multimodal
modes of communication becomes the most salient issue. Kress (2000d) reflects
on the growing impact of this trend:
It is now impossible to make sense of texts, even of their linguistic parts alone,
without having a clear idea of what these other features might be contributing to the
meaning of a text. In fact, it is now no longer possible to understand language and
its uses without understanding the effect of all modes of communication that are
copresent in any text (p. 337).
This is particularly true in mass media and textbook designs, where meaning
making increasingly relies on a variety of multimodal resources in such a way
that language interfaces with visual, audio, spatial, performative, and gestural
aspects (New London Group, 1996). What this means is that in some contexts,
such as science textbooks, computer applications, movies, video games, and so
forth, the social and material affordances of multimodality, such as sounds,
music, images, movement, and light effects, have led to a reconfiguration of
different modes and media in ways that certain information becomes more
effective and efficient in the visual rather than the verbal mode (Gee, 2003, 2007;
Jewitt, 2005; Kress, 2000c).
There are some reasons for this. First, in multimodal texts, language and images
can be deployed independently and interactively in a way that visual images
communicate something different from languageor the two modes (linguistic
and visual) can combine to produce a meaning that neither conveys separately
(Gee, 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Unsworth, 2001/2004). For example,
images in some public communications carry meanings that are independent of
language in such texts. This means that people who are not visually literate may
not be able decode such meanings. Second, different domainsvideos, textbooks,
billboards, newspapers, comics, rap songs, and so forthrequire different kinds
of literacy skills to access information. This suggests that in some domains, lan-
guage may be appropriate and sufficient, whereas in others, visual images may be
adequate; however, in some contexts, a combination of different modes may be
necessary to convey a message and make meaning.
In view of the multiple, complex, and shifting demands of language learning
and meaning-making skills as new media develop and infiltrate public communi-
cations, there is a need to challenge English-language pedagogy to explore how
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 211
the affordances, the materiality and the provenance of modes and signs (Kress
& Street, 2006, p. viii) relate to everyday social practices of language learners
across cultures and contexts. In particular, there is an urgent need to explore how
semiotics offers English language learners alternative ways of perceiving and
conceptualizing their worlds, how the design of modes offers potential multiple
entry points into a text, how learners use multimodal resources to convey multi-
ple meanings, and what students can do with the resources of diverse types of
narrative afforded them by multimodal resources (Jewitt, 2005).
Happily, Stein (2004) demonstrates how English language learners from
certain communities in South Africa value oral, performative, and gestural forms
of communication above print-based texts. Stein reports that through writing,
verbal modes, role-play, and photography, the students not only use visual
representations to provide details that are absent in the written mode but also
examine their social realities, convey different social identities and experience
their worlds in new ways because of classroom social practices centered on the
use of multimodal resources. This kind of transformative approach that links
classroom learning activities with students identity/subjectivity requires a
theoretical framework, as put forward below.
MEANING MAKING: A THEORETICAL GROUNDING
Freire (2000) contends that authentic education, as the practice of freedom,
should seek to develop learners ability to perceive critically the way they exist
in the world with which and in which they find themselves . . . [and] see the
world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation (p. 83).
Applying this perspective to language learning, I define meaning making as a
process by which learners gain critical consciousness of the interpretation of
events in their lives in relation to the world around them. In this way, the
meaning that individual learners arrive at after reading a story or watching a
video is mediated by their social, cultural, and historical experiences. Thus the
term meaning has two constitutive elementsreflection and action (Freire,
2000). The learner, after reflection, chooses the meaning that represents his or
her perspective out of the possibilities afforded by the society. In many instances,
when students engage in the process of representing their interests, they
transform existing settled and taken-for-granted meanings.
If this theoretical assumption is accepted, then meaning-making practices
should seek to create a framework that develops in learners the capacity for criti-
cal consciousness and transformation (Auerbach, 1995, 1996, 2000; Freire, 2000)
as students struggle to understand the social contexts of their lives and grapple
with the transformation of their social reality and the world in which they live.
Therefore, Paulo Freires theoretical conceptualization of problem-posing and
212 AJAYI
dialogical relations sets the pedagogical goal of posing problems in the
contexts of learners lives in relation with the sociopolitical conditions that
shape their experiences. The underlying assumption here is that when students
are encouraged to dialogue, engage, and challenge conditions that perpetuate
inequalities in the contexts of their lives, they become increasingly critical, gain
new understandings of their social realities, liberate their creative energies, and
thus propel themselves to act as a catalyst for social change and, in the process,
acquire true knowledge (Freire, 2000). In practical terms, the teachers role is
therefore to critically engage learners as co-investigators as the teacher and
students jointly create the learning conditions that help learners to develop and
realize their interests, needs, expectations, and priorities.
In what appears to be classroom applications of Freire theory, Auerbach
(1995, 1996) and Kumaravadivelu (1999) suggest an issue-oriented (issue-
centered) approach to language learning. In a more recent work, Auerbach
(2000)whose conceptual framework for second-language teaching is
strongly influenced by Freireargues for a participatory pedagogy, where
learners are empowered through teaching strategies that put their experiences
and knowledge at the center of the pedagogical process (p. 146). In other
words, the issues and concerns in the contexts of learners lives become the
motor force of instruction (Auerbach, 1996, p. 81) for meaning-making
activities in the language-learning classroom. With this broad definition,
meaning-making practices become a critical tool of connecting the sociocul-
tural contexts of learners lives to the community and the broader society. More
significantly, the ESL teacher becomes an agent of social changesno longer a
neutral transmitter of knowledge (Freire, 2000) but a transformerwho
develops a framework for finding issues related to students lives and develops
meaning-making activities around them with the ultimate aim of effecting
change through the transformation of social and institutional structures in the
broader society (Auerbach, 1995).
Specifically, the teacher engages in shared authority by researching and
presenting learners realities in problematized form (Auerbach, 1995).
Auerbach aptly sums it up: the teacher poses problems and engages students
in dialogue and critical reflection (p. 12) as the students and teacher collabo-
ratively construct knowledge in the classroom. Hence teachers theory and
practice should necessarily provide students the opportunity for the explora-
tion of their own social and cultural world. Auerbach (2000) identifies specific
principles that should guide learning activities, including instructional
practices that focus on learners needs and concerns, the use of themes/
activities that validate learners experiences, the teachers emphasis on critical
understanding and exploration of alternative views, practices that contextualize
acquisition of skills and knowledge, and teaching processes that are dialogical
and collaborative.
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 213
THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
The campaign to ban undocumented immigrants from having drivers licenses
became part of the national political discourse after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The
fiercely contested mayoral election in Los Angeles County in 2005 put the issue at
the center of political campaign and thus became a subject of interest among
immigrants. This is hardly surprising because an estimated 8 million to 12 million
undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, and it is speculated that
4 million of them live in California, with about half of this figure living in and
around Los Angeles.
In 2003, Gray Davis, former governor of the state, signed into law a bill that
allowed undocumented immigrants to have drivers licenses, but this was quickly
repealed after he was removed from office. In 2004, Gov. Schwarzenegger
vetoed another bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to have drivers
licenses.
The latest effort at solving the problem of illegal immigrationthe Minuteman
Projectcame from volunteers (some called them vigilantes) who were
convinced that both the federal and state governments had failed to stem the
current rate of invasion [of] the United States (The Minuteman Project, http://
www.usbc.org/minuteman1.html) by illegal immigrants. The group expressed
the fear that by 2025, illegal aliens and their offspring will be the dominant
population in the U. S. (The Minute Man Project, p. 1). The situation is com-
pounded by the fear that illegal aliens will wield enormous influence in shaping
the American political and social landscapes in the nearest future, even more than
the Constitution and the existing Euro-centric definition of culture. Conse-
quently, the group periodically patrols the border states in an effort to apprehend
illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.
In the past 6 years, because of the politics of drivers licenses, the issue of
immigration control has become a divisive onepitting Mexican immigrants
against White conservative Republicans. Consequently, alien immigrants have
become pawns in the hands of politicians of both the Republican and Democratic
parties. As a vote-getting issue, the two parties, at election cycles, always make
political promises, including the issues of drivers licenses for illegal aliens and
the guest-worker programan arrangement to give a temporary legal status to
illegal aliens to work in the United States.
This was a difficult time in the lives of illegal immigrants for a variety of
reasons, including the 9/11 attacks (and the consequent suspicion of immigrants)
and the post 9/11 immigration laws that allow illegal immigrants to be jailed and
later deported to their native countries without judicial interventions. Thus the
drivers license issue is not only topical but also consequential in terms of its
direct impact on the lives of students who may be, or whose parents may be,
undocumented immigrants. For example, commuting to and from the school and
214 AJAYI
visiting places of interest can be problematic, particularly with the chaotic public
transportation system in Los Angeles. Furthermore, this issue impacts the ability
of parents to secure better-paying jobs where personal transportation is required.
This means the parents ability to earn enough money to support their children
may be adversely affected. Thus, undoubtedly, the issue of drivers licenses and
the attendant consequences constitute a contextual factor (Auerbach, 1996) that
directly shapes learners lives, with ripple effects on their efforts to learn the
English language.
THE RESEARCH
Site of the Study
The school had a student population of 4,839 in 20042005 (http://
www.lausd.demographics). In an extensive report on the school, the Los Angeles
Times (July 14, 2002) wrote that the school was beset with a myriad of problems,
including dismal test scores, overwhelming truancy, high dropout rates (as more
than two thirds of 9th-graders drop out before reaching the 12th grade), and
widespread illiteracy. According to the ESL coordinator and available records on
the school Web site, it appeared that the school did not keep records of the
students literacy levels in the Spanish language. In addition, the newspaper
noted that about 80% of the almost exclusively Black and Latino student
population came from socioeconomically disadvantaged families.
School Language Policy
Of the school population, 2,193 students (45.31%) were classified as Limited
English Proficient (LEP). All of the LEP students are placed in the Basic Bilingual
Program. In the program, teachers use Spanish as a medium of instruction for
grade-level academic subjects like Math and Science while the students are learning
English. Students attend a double period of 116 min of Englishlanguage
development lessons daily. As students become more proficient in the language,
English instruction is increased to teach the different school subjects. The
program is in three levels: Beginning ESL 1A&B, Intermediate ESL 2A&B, and
Advanced ESL 3&4. At the completion of the program, those who pass the
California English Language Development Test are redesignated into the
mainstream English classes.
Advanced ESL 3 Program
The students at this level have completed the Beginning and Intermediate levels
over a period of at least four semesters. The students have gained some degree of
proficiency in the language. The syllabus requires them to learn grade-level
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 215
language arts in English. The curriculum is organized around themes that are of
interest to learners, such as personal expression, discoveries, conflict and resolution,
choices and triumphs (Schifini, Short, & Tinajero, 1998). Furthermore, the
curriculum exposes the students to a range of linguistic skills that English learn-
ers need to acquire in the areas of Language Development and Communication
(language functions and language patterns and structures), Concepts and
Vocabulary, Reading (reading strategies and comprehension), and Literary
Analysis and Appreciation. Other areas include Speaking, Listening, Viewing,
Reporting, Cognitive Academic Skills (learning strategies, critical thinking, and
research skills), and Writing (process, grammar, usage, mechanics, spelling).
However, the analysis of the school language policy and ESL program seems
to suggest that it does not promote the social use of English language in ways that
learners can connect to their own perspectives and social identities. It appears
that a better approach would have been to design the curriculum around aspects
of the students realities as a basis for constructing a participatory learning
community (Auerbach, 1995, 2000). The goal of the policy and program should
have been to help students understand how the English language produces and
reproduces inequitable social relations and how they can make critical interpreta-
tions of their realities and proffer possible alternatives (Auerbach, 1995, 2000;
Pennycook, 2000).
Selection of Subjects
After I discussed this research with the schools ESL program coordinator, she
assigned an existing class of the Advanced ESL 3 program to the project to avoid
any of the disruptions that pulling students from different classes might have
caused. In all, 33 students18 males and 15 femalesparticipated in the
research. Of these, 22 were in ninth grade, 8 were in tenth grade, and 3 were in
eleventh grade. Although the primary language of the students was Spanish, in
their responses to my preteaching survey of biographical information, seven of
them indicated that they were American citizens, whereas the remaining 26 indi-
cated that they came from different countries in Latin America. The immigrants
also indicated that they had been learning English for a period of 2 to 5 years.
The lesson covered a block schedule of 116 min.
Grouping and Seating Arrangement
As this was not my class, I worked with the class teacher to divide the students
into three mixed groups, each consisting of 11 students, although, as part of my
project, I taught this class twice a week for 3 weeks prior to this study. The
purpose of this was in part to get to know the students (i.e., their names, their
English-language level, the seating arrangement, etc.) and establish a relationship
with them. In addition, I had earlier in my teaching career taught ESL in the
216 AJAYI
school for 4 years before I moved to teach at the university. However, because of
my limited relationship with the students, I collaborated with the class teacher to
draw up a seating arrangement. The class teacher and I agreed on three criteria
students achievement scores in the previous semester ESL examination, gender,
and history of learning/using English to divide them into three groups of 11 stu-
dents per group. The students sat in rows, in part because the class had only long
tables and chairs that allowed students in each group to sit and face each other
while working. I also wanted the students to work in large groups so that they
could generate and discuss more ideas.
The Text
I supplied photocopies of a newspaper report GOP Congressman Renews Push
for Immigration Curbs (Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2005, p. 13). Essen-
tially, the text was a report of legislation introduced by a congressman to ban ille-
gal aliens from having drivers licenses, to tighten requirements for political
asylum, and to complete the border fence between California and Mexico. The
congressman was reported to have argued that the provisions of the legislation
would prevent 9/11-type attacks by Al Qaeda groups. The article referenced the
guest-worker programan idea floated by then-governor of Texas, George W.
Bush (now president) during the 2000 presidential election to allow illegal aliens
to apply for temporary legal status in the United States. The viewpoints of the
advocates of the program and those opposing it were reported.
Lesson Presentation
Pre-lesson activities. To activate and/or build the students background
knowledge, I posted four large photographs on the wall (e.g., see Figure 1). Then
I instructed the students to walk to the photographs, look at them, read the
captions, and jot down specific ideas they observed. Their worksheets indicated
they noted the big walls, three men, large roads, beautiful homes,
desert, and cars, among others. Then, I posted four questions on the overhead
projector for quick-write and quick-share activities: (a) What do you learn from
this photograph? (b) What is the importance of the large wall? (c) Who are the
men in the picture and what are they doing? (d) How will you relate this picture
to your life?
As students worked on the assignment and later shared their answers in
groups, I went around the groups to explain the assignment, guide the groups by
providing corrections and prompts and ensuring that each group stayed focused.
After the quick-share, I played a video clip of a campaign rally where a politician
addressed the topic of illegal aliens and drivers licenses. I periodically stopped it
to allow for comments, questions, and perspectives from the students. Next, I led
a whole-class discussion of the topic of illegal aliens and drivers licenses.
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 217
Students brainstormed the bad and good sides of the legislation, and I
charted their points on the whiteboard.
I read aloud to the class the first paragraph of the article GOP Congressman
Renews Push to model appropriate reading behavior for the class. The class read
the remaining paragraphs by using the popcorn reading technique (Herrell &
Jordan, 2004); that is, a student read aloud a paragraph and then called on another
student to read the next paragraph. In this way, I was able to encourage all
students to pay attention to whoever was reading. Also, when the students could
not pronounce a word, or did so wrongly, I asked for volunteers to pronounce
these lexical items. In addition, I also modeled the pronunciation for the class.
While the students read the text aloud, I compiled a list of lexical items the
students could not pronounce at all and those they had a hard time pronouncing
in my observation record. Then I asked some students to identify specific
difficult vocabulary and phrases in the storyvocabulary items they could
neither pronounce nor understand the meanings of. The words were then charted
on the board: permanent status, temporary status, guest-worker program, undoc-
umented immigrants, illegal aliens, and political asylum. Others were amnesty,
FIGURE 1 The MexicoUnited States border fence. Note. Image by Zuma Press, from
Todays Immigrants, by Karen Fanning, 2005, Junior Scholastic, 107(15), p. 7. Copyright
2005 by Trish Murphey, Zuma Press, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
218 AJAYI
opposition, advocacy, legislation, legalization, reform, overhaul, immigration,
and anti-immigration. I had earlier recorded some of the words as difficult lexical
items during my preteaching preparation for the lesson. The words were
therefore adopted for the vocabulary exercise for the study.
Initial definitions. I asked the students to work in their groups to write the
meanings of the vocabularies and phrases posted on the whiteboard by explaining
and/or defining them. I encouraged them to make inferences (i.e., use the context
of the story they were reading) for the words they did not understand the
meanings of.
Meaning-making exploratory activities. I explained the procedure for the
activities. First, each group would work on only one of the activities at any given
time and each group must complete at least two activities. Second, I encouraged
each group to spend an average of 30 min on each activity. Finally, I asked the
students to hand in their work for grading so that the papers would be returned to
them at the end of the lesson. I also sought and obtained the permission of the
class teacher and the students to use two of their drawings for the sole purpose of
researching more effective ways of teaching English as a second language. The
procedure was summarized in a bulletin form, and each student was provided a
copy and another was posted on the board. Then I explained the following three
group activities:
1. Meaning inference activity: I asked all students to reread the text GOP
Congressman Renews Push and highlight the lexical items on the
overhead projector. Furthermore, I explained to the students the need to
use contextual clues, brainstorming, and group discussions to negotiate
the meanings of the words and to write them on their worksheets. In
particular, I encouraged the students to explore the meanings of the
vocabulary and phrases as used in the day-to-day contexts of their own
lives. I suggested that the students could provide multiple meanings.
2. Campaign advertisement activity: I asked the students to pretend that
their work would be posted on a large billboard within the school. I
explained that they had to draw a visual image and create a slogan (a
written text) to accompany the image. Also, their drawings and written
message together must represent their understanding of the meaning of
the newspaper story. I posted the list of vocabulary the students could
choose from on the whiteboard. I guided the students in exploring differ-
ent themes and images they considered appropriate for the assignment.
I also encouraged them to consider the kind of visuals viewers would
consider appropriate for the theme or context of the study.
3. Cartoon strip activity: I explained to the students that they needed to use
the vocabulary items on the overhead projector to recreate the political
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 219
narrative (GOP Renews Push) in a cartoon strip of three or four scenes.
The narrative should include such features as story plot, characterization,
sketches/drawings, caption, and so on. The salient points of the three
activities were summarized and made available to the students in a
bulleted form.
Next I asked a few questions to check the students understanding of the class
assignment. I also took a few questions from the students. I called on two
studentsone to explain the class assignment and the other to explain the
procedure. This is important not only to ensure that the students understand what
to do but also to make sure that they reduced the assignment into their own
language. Then I gave each group three min to decide which activity to handle
first. Group 3 first indicated to me they were ready to start with the meaning
inference activity. I joined the group to provide some prompts and clarifications.
Meaning Construction: From Text Reading to Definition Writing
Group 3: I asked the group to reread the text and highlight the vocabularies and
phrases from the overhead projector on their copies. The students used their ini-
tial definitions as a basis for the meaning inference activity. However, to do the
activity successfully, I gave the students some prompts on how to talk about
meanings, that is how to negotiate meanings of the words and phrases to arrive at
meanings that would be acceptable to the group as reflective of what they
intended to say. The group started with Marias initial definition of the phrases:
Permanent status: Permanent as something that cannot move or something that
will never take off.
Temporary status: Temporary status is something that will take off and go away.
Guest-worker program: Some one that work.
I then encouraged the students to consider whether the meanings were related to
the story the class read. Yasmin presented her definitions for the following
phrases:
Permanent status: Is when you have the permission to stay in our country.
Temporary status: Is when you can stay in our country for only a temporary time.
Guest-worker program: Is the program when state bring workers from another
place.
In the case of Laura, she neither defined nor guessed the meanings of permanent
status and guest-worker. She attempted only one definition, as follows:
Temporary status: When somebody live in a country not belonging to her.
Clearly, these students differed in their definitions of these phrases. I called their
attention to the differences. Whereas Marias definitions seemed to be vague or
220 AJAYI
abstract and unreflective of the text, Yasmin was successful in relating the defini-
tions to the social and political context of the text. For instance, her definitions
were intimately linked to her identity as an American, as she defined the phrases
in terms of staying or not staying in our country.
However, the students were still in the process of negotiating the right words
that would reflect the meanings in the text and at the same time reflect their own
social, cultural, and political understanding of the words. I noticed that the
students efforts to do this were constrained by their limited English language
speaking and writing resources. Frequently, the students had difficulties translating
their ideas into English, and this further constrained their ability to explore the
meanings of the words and phrases. I suggested that the students reread
the sentences in which the words and phrases were found and think of the ways
the lexical items were used in and outside the classroom, including the campaign
video they watched. The group continued with the activity, while I moved on to
work with the group that asked for assistance.
From Written Text to Visual Text
Group 2: I briefly reviewed their initial definitions with the group and they differed in
their definitions of the words. I explained what they needed to do, for example, iden-
tify and agree on specific lexical items they could work with to create the text of the
political ad and also to identify and agree on what the drawingthe visual compo-
nent of the adwould represent. The group agreed to use the following lexical items
and phrases: undocumented worker, immigration, anti-immigration, guest-worker,
and legal. Also, they eventually agreed on drawing a patrol officer chasing people
trying to cross to the United States as in Figure 2:
The layout of the image along a horizontal axis is important for meaning. The
image of a patrol officer on a horse chasing a group of people was placed at the
FIGURE 2 Sample of students advertisements. Reprinted with permission.
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 221
left-hand side and thus readers could take the image as given or information
that they are familiar with. The shocking image of human beings in stampede
was placed on the right-hand side as constitutive of newthe information that
viewers need to pay attention to as the issue or concern of the students. Further-
more, the point of view is frontal, suggesting what you see here is part of our
world, something we are involved with (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). There is
no eye contact between the patrol officer and the immigrants, nor between the
people in the drawing and the viewers. This suggests that there is no contact or
relationship between the officer and the immigrants. Also, the setting of the
drawing is de-emphasized, that is, devoid of any details that could distract the
attention of viewers. In this way, the authors succeeded in ensuring that
viewers focus their attention primarily on the participants in the image.
The group then worked to produce the written text to accompany the visual.
Alma and Karina produced the first draft of the slogan: polis arrest a bounch of
immigrants that move to another country to work but dosent sopost to be in the
country. I encouraged the group to critique the draft of the slogan, calling their
attention to the fact that the slogan didnt include the vocabulary they needed to
use in the ad. They discarded it. Hector started a new ad with the contribution of
others: We Mexicans migration to America because they get better jobs but
anti-immigration people jail them because they are undocumented workers.
What the students produced here is an example of the multimodal approach to
meaning making. The students applied composite visuals or multimodal text
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), texts in which meanings are realized through the
integration of a combination of multiple semiotic codesvisuals and written
modes. Taken together, the visual and written media in Figure 2 present a meaning
that reflects the learners lived experience. The image of the pursuer and the
pursued thus offers deeper understanding of the sociopolitical interpretations of
the newspaper story. The students critical understanding (Auerbach, 2000) of
the story seems to be as a result of the teaching practice that relates pedagogical
processes to the learners lives. Auerbach (1995, 2000) contends that students learn
when instructional practices problematize the representation of their reality and
give them a voice to present such experience.
To me, the most important issue here is the fact that the students recreation of
the text from written medium to visual opened up new possibilities for wider
interpretations of the vocabularies. Their visual representation showed a border
patrol (some called it the Minutemen) official pursuing a group of people in a
stampede. I suggested a need to enhance the relation of the factual details in the
text with their own visual creation. For example, I was curious as to why the
boarder patrol officer looked Hispanic rather than White. Melinda explained that
she had never seen an American border patrol officer and that it was easier to
draw a Mexican border patrol officer from her experience in her native country.
The students explanation is an example of what Said (1994) describes as
222 AJAYI
cultural generalization (or cultural common-dare), that is, a culturally
sanctioned practice by which monocultural people deploy their own familiar
cultural attributes to explain other people without disrupting common sense.
Here the student projected her culture (what she was familiar with) to explain a
new culture (what she was not familiar with.) This shows that learning does not
take place in a vacuum but in the context of learners social and cultural
background experiences and perspectives.
Figure 2 demonstrates that the students action (drawing) is not just creative
and innovative, but also transformativethis is in the sense that the visual
extends the range of meaning possibilities in the newspaper story. When I asked
why the group drew a horse rather than a patrol jeep, the students explained that a
horse was more appropriate to chase people in the desert than a patrol car.
Similarly, the drawing of people in stampede was an obvious reference to the
plight of illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States. Although
the original text did not contain these details, the students reflected them in the
drawing. Here again, the students used the visual images as the predominant
representational media to convey their understanding of the message of the text
they read. To me, this is an indication of a critical understanding of the story. To
the students, meaning making is not abstract and independent of the social reality
of their world but involves a conscious and reflective processing of information.
In fact, their work suggests that meaning making is affective and constitutive of
learners subjectivities (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). This is what Freire (2000)
calls know[ing] the text and context . . . [and] . . . be[ing] critical (p. 11). I
moved on to work with Group 1.
An Exploration of Semiotic Possibilities
Group 1 had completed the meaning inference activity and was beginning to work
on the cartoon strip activity by the time I joined them. I briefly reviewed the first
activity with them. Then I encouraged the students to select specific lexical items
they would use in the story (immigrants, anti-immigrants, illegal, undocumented
workers, reform). Next I worked with the students to develop a story line from the
original text. Scene 1 provided comparative perceptions of a spatial view of the
United States and Mexico, scene 2 showed the border patrol officers chasing sus-
pects, scene 3 showed immigrants in the streets of America, and scene 4 showed
an immigrant in jail for driving without a drivers license, as in Figure 3.
The students used a combination of horizontal and vertical structuring to give
pictorial meaning to the story we read in the class. In Figure 3, the top left-hand
frame is the given, the depiction of the promise of a good life in America,
and the second top framethe arrest of illegal immigrantsis the new. But
the upheaval brought by the Minuteman Project and the consequent imprison-
ment of illegal aliens produced a new opposition between the ideal of life in
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 223
America and the real in terms of jail sentences for illegal aliens. The given
shows big buildings, cars, and expansive roads that immigrants would like to be
part of. This is the promise or dream with the emotive appealthe sense of
what life might be (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996)that lures aliens to
America. At the bottom of the frame are two images that constitute the real.
The left bottom drawing shows the image of immigrants who seemed to be at a
loss, and the right bottom drawing shows a pathetic image of another immigrant
in jail. Thus the images at the bottom depict the more realistic and practical life
of illegal aliens. Hence viewers can easily see the contrast, in fact the opposition,
between the top and bottom frames. Furthermore, the contextual meaningthe
opposition between the elements of meaning (the dream life of America and
imprisonment)was depicted through visual syntax. To achieve this contrast, the
writers drew a sharp line to separate the top from the bottom. More important,
the man in jail looks directly at viewers to establish an imaginary relationship
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) with them and therefore gain their sympathy.
Auerbach (2000) theorizes that when instructional processes draw on the
social context of learners lives, that is, the concrete experiences of their lives,
learning becomes meaningful. It is in this context that the shared background
knowledge of the students (i.e., watching arrests of immigrants on TV, the
on-going upheaval caused by the Minuteman Project in their community, and the
FIGURE 3 Students cartoon strip. Reprinted with Permission.
224 AJAYI
fact that many of the students were new immigrants, according to the preteaching
survey) became critical in extending their understanding of the text and the con-
sequent meanings attributed to the vocabulary and phrases in the newspaper
story. Freire (2000) contends that when people develop the ability to perceive
critically the world in which they live, they come to see the world not as a static
reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation (p. 83).
Next, the students worked to produce a written text to accompany the visual.
Scene 1 depicted the opulence of life in America (note the buildings and cars)
against the desert of the Mexican border of the fence. The students wrote Immi-
grant go to America to find America dream for them and their family. In scene
2, the students wrote Anti-immigrant was trying to get the 4 people because it
was illegal immigrants. In scene 3, they wrote Undocumented workers in Los
Angeles because they want jobs to feed their family. In scene 4 the character
became a crusader against the immigration law: give us driver license, we do
not come to jail. Reform your law.
Through the visual mode, the contextual understanding of the lexical items
that seemed out of reach to the students because of the limitations in English
became achievable. Through visual images the students brought to the fore the
plight of illegal immigrants. Here the comic strip empowers the students not only
to show their concern in the current social discourse about immigration in the
broader social context and take a critical look at their social condition as immi-
grants in America but also extend their understanding of the meaning of the story
they read. For example, the original story included neither the notion of the
police chasing illegal aliens nor the idea of jail terms for aliens who drove
without a drivers license. The students took advantage of visual semiotics to
express much more emotion and experience than they otherwise might be able to
express in standard English. Thus, the comic strip provides a cover to partici-
pate in the social transformation of their society. This is what Freire (2000) calls
the liberating and transforming power of an authentic educationan education
that evokes a critical reflection and a critical consideration of reality as learners
examine and formulate their relations with others as mediated by the world
around them. For example, in scene 3, undocumented, was defined as people who
came to the United States in search of jobs to feed their families, rather than as
people who have broken the law and should be sent to jail.
The Final Definitions
After completion of the group activities, I instructed the students to write the
final definitions of the words and phrases on the overhead projector (the same
lexical items we were working on). As I moved within the groups during the final
assignment, two observations were apparent. First, all of the students wrote some
sort of definitions or explanations, unlike the pretreatment stage (initial
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 225
definition), when many students skipped several of the vocabulary items.
Second, I noticed a significant shift between the pretreatment and posttreatment
word meanings that the students wrote. It appeared that the teacherstudent and
studentstudent dialogue, the multimodal meaning representations, and the mul-
tiple learning activities gave the students the impetus to extend the meanings
attributed to the vocabularies and phrases in the original text. In significant ways,
the definitions shifted from the initial general or abstract definitions to entail an
inclusion of the students social experiences as mediated by the sociopolitical
reality in the broader society. The students became liberated to impose their
sociopolitical realities and voices in their meanings. Here are some examples by
the students:
Yasmin
Permanent status: When the foreigner have the green card or right to stay in
America.
Guest-worker program: Is the how millions of undocumented Hispanic worker to
apply for temporary legal status.
Undocumented worker: Hispanic workers that dont have legal document to
work in America.
Reyna
Undocumented worker: Mexican who works in America and does not have per-
mission to stay and work.
Immigration: To move from you own place in Mexico to stay in America.
Hector
Legal: When you do something that the government felt that you is right.
Karina
Anti-immigration: Some people that dosent like immigrant from Hispanic to stay
in America.
Alma
Guest-worker program is a program that give some rights to undocumented per-
son to live in America.
SOME OBSERVATIONS
The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, this study dem-
onstrates that multiplicity of learning activities is an important mediating factor in
ESL meaning-making lessons, as such activities provide the necessary opportu-
nity for students to enter into a dialogue and collaboration. This observation is
226 AJAYI
consistent with the New London Groups (1996) conclusion that when students
learn in the context of a multiplicity of learning activities and approaches, they
gain in metacognition and metalinguistic skills and also enhance their ability to
critically reflect on complex systems and their interactions. Also, the students in
this study constructed word meanings that reflected the sociopolitical realities of
their own world. In other words, the students became active designers of mean-
ing (New London Group, 1996, p. 65). In addition, English learners benefit
more when instructional content relates directly to the social conditions of their
lives and when pedagogical practices encourage them to engage in a critical
understanding of their social contexts. This is what Freire (2000) calls liberating
education, specifically a learning situation that makes students look at the social
context of their lives so that they understand more clearly who they are as they
work to build a better future. Furthermore, a multimodal approach is critical in
ESL classrooms, as it affords students the opportunity to tap into the different
semiotic possibilities for meaning making and communication. Lastly, the
teachers role is critical in pedagogical practices that emphasize a critical under-
standing as all members of the classroom work together (through dialogue and
collaboration) to create knowledge. Freire rightly argues that the teachers role is
to create, together with students, the necessary conditions for constructing true
knowledge.
THE WAY FORWARD
I set out to examine how meaning-making processes in an ESL classroom can
explore multiple learning activities and multimodal practice in the context of
the social conditions that shape students experiences. Auerbach (2000)
eloquently argues that learning possibilities in the classroom are mediated by
factors in broader society and that these factors should be taken into account
when designing instructional practices for students. As I have demonstrated
in this study, it is critically important that teachers become familiar with issues
of concern in the lives of their students. The role of the teacher in the classroom
is therefore to investigate and present learners realities in a problematized
form (Auerbach, 1995; Freire, 2000). In other words, teachers must keep
asking the very important question: how do we make the pedagogical processes
relevant to the learning needs of our students and validate their social
background experiences?
One important step toward this is that both the teacher and the students learn
to work collaboratively to discover the connection between classroom learning
and the broader social and political contexts of learning. This is what Shor and
Freire (1987) describe as critical pedagogy, that is, the integration of the
students and the teachers into a mutual creation and re-creation of knowledge
MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN AN ESL CLASSROOM 227
(p. 8). This process involves teachers exploration and analysis of the issues and
concerns that are constitutive of the context of learners lives. I concur with
Auerbachs (1995) argument that students should be active participants in
deciding what to explore and how to explore it in the process of creating their
own knowledge and the application of such knowledge. The involvement of stu-
dents in dialogue and critical reflection offers the classroom as a spacea con-
textfor learners to analyze their reality and participate in its transformation
(Auerbach, 1995).
This is why Shor and Freire (1987) called for academic knowledge that
absorbs students subjective positions. When teachers engage in critical
pedagogies, not only will classroom processes be designed for the future
needs of students, but the process will also see individual learners as trans-
formers, creators, and innovators with the capability to shape the cultural,
social, and political contexts of their lives. As subjects of constant social,
political, cultural, and historical changes, teachers may have to learn to adjust
to social changes. Part of the social change of our times involves literacy
practice that enables learners to integrate multimodality, in particular visual
semiotics, with meaning-making practice in the classroom. Meaning-making
activities engage students in creative literacy exploration of multimodal
texts such as cartoon strips, comic books, photographs, computer graphics,
drawings, and so on.
Finally, it is high time that educators, researchers, and theorists develop
Englishlanguage learning curricula that recognize the diverse forms, the many
sites, and the multiple purposes of meaning making and communication, and
present these variables in the social and cultural context of learners lives, link
them to the broader societal needs, and show them as the effects of the
agentive, creative, transformative, designing action of individuals communicat-
ing in their social lives (Kress, 2000a p. 142). Such theories and classroom
practices should therefore seek to develop in teachers and students an analytical
metalanguagea language for talking about language, images, texts, and
meaning-making interactions (New London Group, 1996, p. 77). In essence,
the development of the tool kit should seek to advance the potential of indi-
vidual learners to identify and analyze the multimodal properties of different
text-types. In addition, they need to learn how to relate the common characteris-
tics and unique features of the different semiotic modes across different textual
forms and diverse social and cultural contexts where they seem to function
effectively. The notion of design (New London Group, 1996) is therefore
critical to meaning-making theorypractice dynamics that seek not only to
integrate learners actions and reflections (Freire, 2000) and available semiotic
signs, but also to make available to them the potential that allows individuals to
shape, create, and transform meaning. This is the essence of true knowledge, and
of learning, and of meaning-making.
228 AJAYI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the editors for giving me the opportunity to publish this article. I am also
indebted to an anonymous reviewer for the incisive and constructive comments
and suggestions that have improved the quality of this article.
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