Multiliteracidad: La relevancia de tareas multimodales procesuales para la enseñanza de una Lengua Segunda en entornos universitarios

Abstract

This paper analyzes, from a multiliteracies perspective, the relevance of processual multimodal perspectives for L2 tasks in university settings, given their potential to refine the use of qualitative assessments. In particular, it examines a task based on maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, which includes the two central semiotic modes of image and language. The theoretical framework is based on Meyer et al.’s multiliteracies model, which considers the integration of content and language to be fundamental to learning. Students were asked to design an alternative book cover for Maus and write about it. While the literature has emphasized the possibilities and limitations of each mode, here we focus on the interdependent nature of these modal sets, considered as task-relevant products of a broader learning process that takes into account different embodiments of meaning-making. Three samples were selected from a corpus composed of 46 alternative covers of the graphic novel and their descriptive texts. The selection was based on a qualitative evaluation in the tradition of Systemic Functional Linguistics, considering the notion of more effective and less effective choices that realize meaning depending on the context. We first describe the multimodal process-based task that takes into account multiliteracies and their contexts of use, and then we discuss the qualitative evaluation processes, taking into account the notion of a modal set. Based on the contrastive analysis of the most effective and least effective covers with their corresponding texts, we illustrate the potential of this type of task for qualitative process-based assessment and its implications for language teaching at the university level.