Lim, Fei Victor

This paper explores the implications of youths’ out-of-school gaming practices for teaching and learning in formal and informal learning contexts. We report on a study where we examined the video game play of two youths using a case study approach. User experience approaches, e.g. the think-aloud protocol and interviews, were grounded in the theoretical framework of social semiotics to analyse the gameplay videos and to discuss the implications for the youths’ learning. The paper contends that youths are demonstrating critical thinking, empathy, and multimodal literacy through their gameplay. We offer suggestions for how adults can use video games for youths’ learning.

In this article, we describe how a design-based research approach brought about teacher learning in terms of both confidence and competence to design and enact a multiliteracies lesson package. This study is situated within the efforts to grow a community of practice comprising teacher champions across schools as they work closely with researchers. Based on a single case study of a teacher, the article discusses her discernible trajectory of growth as evident from her reflections collected after each of the lesson co-design sessions, the lesson plans that she designed, and her actual classroom practices. The findings from the study suggest that the design-based research approach, given its features, can be productive in bringing about a deeper and more reflective teacher learning and as a platform to strengthen the nexus between research and practice.

Against the current backdrop of the controversies and concerns over machine scoring, this paper focuses on one specific, less controversial, aspect of how machine can be effective in improving students’ writing, that is in identifying and providing timely feedback on language accuracy to students. This paper investigates the use of a Linguistic Feedback Tool (LiFT) to identify and provide feedback of the use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in students’ composition as well as the potential reduction in the teacher’s marking time through a study conducted in Singapore schools. Part One of the study explores the teachers and students’ reception as well as the students’ experience of using a LiFT in their compositions. Part Two of the study investigates the hypothesis that the students’ use of a LiFT to review composition drafts before submission to the teachers would reduce the teachers’ marking time. The findings indicate that both teachers and students are receptive to the use of a LiFT to improve students’ English composition and that there are time-saving from marking for the teachers.

Multiliteracies has been incorporated in the curriculum of many education systems around the world. Beyond the broadening of focus in literacy to include multimodal meaning‐making, multiliteracies pedagogies are also associated with certain pedagogical shifts, such as a focus on bridging the students' out‐of‐school literacy practices with what and how they are learning in school. This often involves appropriating social media as well as introducing popular culture topics in the classroom. This article discusses the students' perspectives of these ideas to inform the teacher's design of multiliteracies learning. Drawing on data collected through surveys and focus group discussions from a multi‐phased research project on multiliteracies in Singapore, we reflect on the students' expressions of their experiences and expectations on multiliteracies learning. In particular, we surface an instrumental view of learning where concerns over examinations and future career prospects cloud the students' learning. We also identify a desire among the students to keep their worlds of home and schools separate. While the discussion of the students' perspectives is anchored in the context of Singapore, the implications contribute to the global discourse among curriculum planners, educational researchers and teacher practitioners who are interested in improving the design of multiliteracies learning in their contexts.

YouTubers focusing on college-related content have gained traction in recent years. This study explores the ways College YouTubers establish their personal branding online using a social semiotic perspective. Focusing on how two YouTubers of different cultural backgrounds, from the United States and Singapore, document their first day of college amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a multimodal discourse analysis is carried out on the two videos to identify the prominent modes utilised to make meaning. We analyse the multimodal discourse of the videos of the College YouTubers and discuss the impression management strategies the online content creators adopted from the dramaturgical perspective. Our study seeks to contribute towards understanding how online content creators engage in digital labour and present themselves successfully in self-commodification through personal branding.

The future of TESOL must engage critically with the multimodal turn, acknowledging the shifting landscape of communication in a digital age where meaning-making extends beyond linguistic forms to encompass a range of semiotic resources, such as images, gestures, sounds, and spatial designs. This paper argues for a twofold agenda: augmenting English language learning with multimodality and broadening the scope of literacy education to include multimodal literacy. This involves leveraging multimodal resources not merely as supplementary tools but as integral components of language instruction, thereby enriching learners’ communicative competence in authentic and diverse contexts. The paper calls for a strategic and systemic response from the TESOL community, advocating for research-informed pedagogies, policy frameworks that recognize the importance of multimodal literacy, and targeted professional development for teachers.

WiREAD+ is a web-based collaborative critical reading and learning analytics environment to scaffold learning and motivate students to develop richer dialogue and quality interactions with peers around multimodal texts. This paper reports on the pilots to scale up the use of WiREAD+ beyond the original context of Secondary School English Language (EL) learning to three distinct educational settings, namely, EL in a primary school, English Literature in a junior college (pre-university), and a tertiary-level Discourse Studies course. We report on learners’ perceptions in response to the use of the system and reflect on the potential and challenges in scaling up the system across different educational contexts, specifically on the three augmentations to the system which we have designed to improve its scalability readiness. Drawing from the findings of the pilot studies, we briefly discuss how we can support the wider adoption and deployment of the system across schools and settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures in many countries have increased young people's engagement with digital media. The digital divide goes beyond just having devices and includes differences in how well young people can use digital technology. In this paper, we shift our attention beyond screen time to the nature of the adolescents' digital media use. Our study looks at two adolescents from different backgrounds to understand how their digital media experiences differ in viewing, play, and reading. We add to the literature on the influence SES has on the ways in which adolescents are using digital media during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. Our study was conducted during the pandemic and participants were selected using convenience stratified sampling and the snowballing method. Our findings show that the adolescents' digital viewing was motivated by the need to be a part of an affinity group and that while the viewing was passive, it served a social function to develop a sense of connectedness with peers. We also found that adolescents from high socioeconomic backgrounds tended to engage in more digital reading compared to their peers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, while the adolescents' digital play was shaped by their socioeconomic realities, they were able to make the most from their circumstances and demonstrated both creativity and savviness. By demonstrating the disparities in digital media experiences between two adolescents from contrastive socioeconomic backgrounds, we shed light on the implications of the digital divide, where both equitable access to digital resources and the development of digital literacies necessary to navigate the digital landscape is currently lacking. We argue for the importance for researchers and policymakers to move beyond acknowledging long-standing concerns and take actionable steps to address these issues.