11. Toward a Multimodal Critical Approach to the Teaching of EFL in Brazil

Educational Practices on Ethnic-racial Relations and the English Language Teaching through Image and Literature in an EFL Classroom

“…Upon reading Achebe's poems and encountering code-switching, 10 students were unable to establish a more fluid understanding of the poem A Wake for Okigbo (Lyons & Achebe 1998, p. 49), which had to be worked on during the period of two classes to discuss metaphors and linguistic hybridities that the poem brings. Furthermore, oral and written texts produced by the students aligns with a notion that teaching foreign language from a multimodal approach can contribute to the improvement of critically reading a visual or written text (Almeida 2009;Lins de Almeida & Souza 2017).…”

“…For selection purposes, interviews and written tests were applied, and students should have intermediate or advanced English and interest in reading, writing, and discussing literary texts in English. Under the considerations of Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), Schøllhammer (2007) and Lins de Almeida & Souza (2017), the lectures on Another Africa's authors, the connections between Achebe's exile in the United States and the collaboration between a writer and a photographer took into account only the use of stereotyped images of the African continent over the last five centuries compiled by Hall (1997). Based on images collected and commented by Hall (1997) in his essay The Spectacle of the Other, and after reading and discussing them, the students carried their discussion concerning their previous viewpoints about the African continent.…”

“…Secondly, the students learned about the Anglophone portion of the African continent and were put in contact with Another Africa in digital version. Initially, the students read all the book chapters, based only on the images, in order to develop the learning of visual literacy in the first place (Kress & van Leeuwe, 2006;Almeida 2009;Lins de Almeida & Souza, 2017).…”