Multicultural Images: Approaching Otherness with EFL Trainee Teachers

This chapter examines the theme of ‘otherness’ already presented in Takala, but in a specific historical context. Here, otherness is related to ethnicity and it is examined through the lens of multicultural images. This time the focus is on images related to Jewish culture, history, and traditions. This contribution begins with a description by Serrano Amores of the motivation underlying the choice of topic, the choice of images and the reason for linking the topic and images in the context of multicultural awareness and learning another language. Then the authors highlight how literature, advertising etc. have been used in the past to teach language and argues how these same materials can be extremely useful in developing cultural awareness. The chapter then offers suggestions for the use of images to help develop cultural awareness in language teachers and learners. Starting with the ‘corpus’ of six images, Serrano Amores and Guerin use these to illustrate how these might be used in a language-learning context. They argue that by not dealing with artifacts of photography at school, society ends up with visual illiterates – this is a very interesting hypothesis if seen in terms of Learning 21 (Guerin, 2010:80ff.). Serrano Amores begins by analyzing the characteristics of the images, examines how they are independent of text even when they co-occur, and highlights the importance of developing and encouraging visual literacy especially in children. Serrano Amores then presents the five-variable Kress-Leeuwen (2006) analysis model. Then, Guerin uses this analysis model to undertake a detailed analysis of the previously-mentioned six-picture corpus. She presents two of the pictures at a time, analyzes each of these two pictures in detail, and repeats the process for the whole corpus. The authors then propose how to use the picture-corpus by developing three sample lesson-plans from the point of view of teaching-methodology. These lesson-plans can be easily adapted to different educational contexts and different CEFR Levels. Each sample lesson-plan begins with a warm-up activity related to the images. This is followed by the main activity which focuses on the pictorial content and message. Then,there is a post-activity in the form of an open-response interview, which is used to conclude the activity. In conclusion, by using the Kress-Leeuwen model (2006), Serrano Amores and Guerin intend to raise awareness as regards the development of visual literacy competences and multicultural awareness in trainee-teachers and learners in relation to a specific historical period. In this chapter, we are also reminded of the idea of 'language as culture', as well as the fact that the boundaries between written texts and visual arts need to be rethought.