The Visual and Multimodal Research Forum is a student run platform for academic discussion on multimodality and open to all postgraduate research students and other researchers at UCL Institute of Education and elsewhere. Participation is free. Please contact Sophia Diamantopoulou, Forum Coordinator, at sdiamantopoulou@ioe.ac.uk for any queries.

Date: Monday 19th of January, 5:00-6:30 pm

Venue: London Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, WC1N 3QS

Transformation and transduction: from EFL textbooks to teaching practice in English classrooms in China

Tao Qu, PhD student, Tongji University/visiting PhD student at UCL Institute of Education

This presentation reports a pilot study of my PhD project, which is concerned with transformation and transduction from EFL textbook to teaching practice in English classrooms in China. Here, I take Gunther Kress’ definition of transformation and transduction: The former refers to re-ordering of meaning-making elements in the same mode, while the latter refers to re-articulation of meaning from one mode to another. My research data consists of two parts: first, most widely used EFL textbooks in Chinese universities; second, videos recording how teachers are teaching, based on these textbooks. Videos are collected from an online database where a variety of Chinese universities upload their classroom teaching videos for learning and research uses. By comparing the textbooks and videos, this study first explores where meaning is transformed or transducted, and then discusses why transformation and transduction occur, and finally talks about the gains and losses in the process. Through the study on transformation and transduction, this research aims to offer potentially useful tools for both EFL textbook design and teaching practice in China.

Participants in this session of the Forum may be interested in the following books:

G.Kress (2010).Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routeledge.

Jewitt, C. and G. Kress (2003). Multimodal literacy. New York: Peter Lang.