Linguistic Landscape Signs in E-Textbooks: Teaching Language as a Compass for Exploring Multimodal Texts, Multilingualism, and Digital Resources

Abstract

Rapid technological development and the growth of educators’ and students’ digital skills have allowed e-textbooks to take root in different school subjects’ pedagogical practices. This article’s aim is to compare two e-textbooks – A Guide for Exploring City Texts (Berra (Burr), 2020) and Linguistic Landscapes in English Language Teaching: A Pedagogical Guidebook (Solmaz & Przymus, 2021) – in terms of their technological and pedagogical frameworks and to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of using a language e-textbook which heavily utilizes linguistic landscape signs. The comparison shows that the e-textbooks’ main technological advantages are hyperlinking, bookmarking, highlighting, annotating, and searching. Their content uncovers pedagogical concepts they both share: (1) authenticity, (2) resourcefulness, (3) connectivism, (4) a focus on text genres. Language in both textbooks is understood in the context of semiotic resources, so knowledge and skills in one language are inextricably linked to awareness of other languages, semiotic consciousness, and multiliteracies. The learning process in both e-textbooks is designed in a way that students interactively create and contribute knowledge and apply them in various real-life situations. There are a few drawbacks of the e-textbooks. First, their current technological do not allow for changing the order, length, or content of chapters, subchapters, or sections. Second, a lack of space for writing answers in e-textbooks, which can be frustrating for students. Third, none of the e-textbooks provides content for the entire study year/course, language level, or national subject standard.

A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies

“…Finally, she describes the development of a textbook in Latvian titled Ceļvedis pilsētu tekstu izpētē [A Guide for Exploring City Texts] (Berra, 2020), which specifically offers possibilities for investigating linguistic landscapes through learning activities. In Burr (2021), she compared this guide to the e-learning guide for English language learners by Solmaz and Przymus (2021) on pedagogical concepts like authenticity, resourcefulness, connectivism and a focus on text genres.…”