Youth Participation in Shaping the Textual Landscape

In order for students to successfully recognise their “true selves” when they are made to believe they belonged to certain “categories” based on the general society’s point of view, I think it is extremely vital to teach and equip our students with both critical reading and critical thinking skills. This is because many non -critical readers often take for granted that texts provide facts and as a result, they might happily accept whatever information presented in a text. Unlike critical readers, non- critical readers fail to recognize the point that any single text provides merely one individual’s perspective on the subject matter.

Since critical reading is not simply close and careful reading, one must actively recognize, analyze and make inferences from the evidence upon the page in order to read critically. Hence, I will set aside a lesson for the teaching of critical reading and the lesson objectives will be as follows:

• to recognize an author’s purpose by examining the basis for choices of content and language.

• to understand tone and persuasive elements which involves classifying the nature of language choices.

• to recognize bias that consists of classifying the nature of patterns of choice of content and language.

Certainly, teaching critical reading only might not be adequate due to the very fact that it works together with critical thinking in reality. Thus, the latter must also be incorporated into the lesson. While critical reading refers to a careful, active, reflective, analytic reading, critical thinking includes reflecting on the validity of what has been read in light of one's background knowledge and understanding of the world.

For instance, consider the following sentence:

Many parents are buying expensive cars for their children to destroy them.

In the above statement, critical reading is concerned with figuring out whether, within the context of the text as a whole, "them" refers to the parents, the cars, or the children and whether the text supports that practice. Critical thinking would come into play when deciding whether the chosen meaning was indeed true and whether the reader should support that practice.

With these definitions, critical thinking would seem to come after critical reading. In other words, we can truly evaluate the assertions of a text(critical thinking)only when it is fully understood (critical reading).

Critical Reading in Everyday Life

This is an old commercial, but a classic. This was first shown to me in another module, which I have enrolled for this semester. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.





Coding Competence (How do I crack this?)

A young, sweet girl entered a bar with her grandfather and ordered a Pepsi. For some reasons, she was given a Coke instead by a male bartender. Here comes the twist as she starts speaking like a mafia boss from the movie, “The Godfather”. This sudden change in her has caused a shock to everyone present in the bar, including all staff and customers. Ultimately, she was given what she wanted, that is a can of Pepsi-cola.

Semantic Competence (What does this mean?)

The advertisement is trying to promote its product, the Pepsi-cola drink. It is trying to suggest that the drink itself is very popular among the customers to the extent that one has to take extreme measures in order to get hold of it.

Pragmatic Competence (What do I do with this, here and now?)

There are two processes at work here. First, viewers of this advertisement will have to decide whether they would like to purchase the product after viewing the entire video. Second, viewers have to face the question of whether they are convinced that Pepsi-cola is the more popular choice as compared to its rival company.

Critical Competence (What is this text trying to do to me? In whose interests?)

In the beginning segment of the advertisement, the little girl has clearly indicated to the bartender that she would like to have a Pepsi-cola. However, the bartender ignored her order and proceeded to get her a coca-cola instead on his own accord. As a result, the girl was so offended that she had to impersonate the low, commanding and husky voice of a powerful male in order to ‘threaten’ the bartender to give her what she wants. In addition, the little girl was being objectified as a type of desert that is meant to be eaten, since the term, “cupcake”, is used to address the little girl by the bartender. In this case, feAll these suggest to the viewers that voices of the females, regardless of age, are very often left unheard or given less importance. Given the fact that the people often subconsciously “accept” whatever is presented to them in a text without challenging it, there is a high tendency for the viewers to learn and reproduce such gender stereotypes in their daily lives and this includes the females too, which is a form of hegemony.

Critical Reading Skills in Secondary 2

Local children have been passive learners on the receiving end of an inundation of information under formal education system. Therefore, changes should be made with increase emphasis on collaboration. Children should be given opportunities to work with each other in their efforts to know and understand, after providing them with the essential knowledge, tools and resources. Cooperative learning approaches, in my opinion, enables students to explore many different perspectives in which a problem can be solved, and consequently this will greater their understanding.

Before I play the video in class, I would ask the students to pay close attention to the advertisement as they are required to discuss and answer a series of questions in their respective groups. These questions will be printed onto sheets of paper prior to the lesson and they are listed as follows:

1) What is the commercial advertisement about?

2) What do you think is the setting of this advertisement? How do you know?

3) Who are the main participants?

4) What do you think is the main aim of this advertisement?

5) What is so interesting about this advertisement?

6) What will be the effect if the little girl is being replaced by a little boy instead?

7) Why do you think the little girl is being given a glass of Coke when she asked for Pepsi?

8) The term, “cupcake” is being used to address the little girl by the male bartender. How would you feel if you are being called that? Why do you say so?

9) Are there any stereotypes present in the advertisement? If yes, what kind of stereotypes are found and why do you say so?

10) Do you think these stereotypes are also found in our local context?

After the 20 minutes of discussion, groups will be randomly selected to present their answers to the class and feedback will be provided by their peers, followed by the teacher.

Articles By James Gee & Gutierrez et al

Two of the major concepts which I have learnt from the two articles are as follows:

1) Literacy

It is integral to success in the contemporary society. Competence in literacy is essential for an individual to participate fully in society, that is, to be able to take part in the work force, engage in democratic processes and contribute to the society. This is particularly significant in our local context. Singapore, being a small dot on the world map, does not possess many natural resources. Therefore, she could only rely on her human capital to compete for survival in the highly competitive environment. With this backdrop, our school system is structured to produce economically useful knowledge and to classify people efficiently into different jobs that have to be filled in the stratified occupational structure.

Consequently, local children are brought up with the perception that knowledge is everything in life. Other aspects of life such as moral values are often neglected in our school curriculum as they pale in comparison with examinable subjects like English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue. This, in turn, creates the “paper chase” phenomenon today.

2) Hybridity

Third space falls under hybridity because it is a combination of both the official and unofficial space. To me, the concept of third space is pretty similar to what we known as the “teaching moment", which is highly valued in our local education scene. A good teacher is often one who never fail to “seize the moment” to teach the children something that is outside of the syllabus.

There are several implications that teacher might have to consider when implementing third space in their lessons. Many times when children produce remarks to which they do not know how to respond, teachers simply chose not to address what has been just said, due to the fear of saying the wrong things. In addition, some teachers are too academic driven, to the extent that they would not forsake any time to teach beyond the syllabus. Others rejected the idea due to time constraint, a problem that is faced by many teachers in Singapore.

Semiotic Analysis With Reference To G. Kress' Reading

The children poster shown above resembles part of a patchwork quilt. The two modes of writing and image are both present in this colour-rich fine art print. Serving as a form of children's inspiration, different colours and typography are used in the poster to capture the attention of children. Words found in the captions surrounding the patchwork make up the writing mode.

Kress states that "the two modes of writing and of image are each governed by distinct logics, and have distinctly different affordances" (p.1). The details are reflected in the table shown below:



Referring to the image for instance, the sentence “Rainbow always follows the storm” can only be read in one way and that is in the order which the words are presented so as to make sense of what is being said. This compulsion to read in the order which words appear in a clause is commonly known as “reading path”. The sentence will not be meaningful if one is to mess up the order of words. Though reading path exists in the image too, there is more than one way of viewing it. Humans are found to start reading from what is considered to be the most salient to them followed by the less salient ones. Hence, the reading path is considered to be rather open because some elements of the image might appear more salient to some people and less salient to the rest.

The image and text found in this patchwork prose complement one another. In other words, the former cannot do without the presence of the latter. This is because it is rather impossible for readers to comprehend what message the creator is trying to convey if they are to refer only to the pictures, since the six pictures bear no relations to one another. For example, if one is to look only at the picture shown on the top right corner of the image, he/she might instantly recognize it as a sun and he/she might wonder, “Yeah, so what about the sun?”, since the other pictures do not provide any information on it. However, with the sentence, “Let the very best you shine”, one is able to realize the analogy at work here is shine as brightly as the sun. (Note that the sun and the word, “shine” are both in yellow. This suggests that they are related in some ways or another.)

On the other hand, though words alone are enough to convey meaning, they do have their own constraints too. They might not explain the meanings as well as pictures do simply because "a picture is worth a thousand words". For example, the word, “bloom” located at the bottom left corner does not say much itself because the word contains many senses. However, the picture of a flower helps to limit the number of senses to down to one. Readers will thus be able to recognize the intended message as bloom like a flower. In addition, words might not leave a deep impression in children's minds as compared to pictures, especially for those who learn better through visuals.

Social Semiotics By Van Leeuwen

Prior to reading the chapter on “semiotic resources”, I used to think that I have mastered the gist of “framing” in the context of visual communication because this concept has been introduced in several past modules such as AAE102 and AAE232. I was confident in thinking that framing is solely about the disconnection of different elements found in a text through empty space between elements, colours and frame-lines. I have failed to realize that this same concept could have been used in depicting the “connectedness” between elements of a visual composition. In addition, I was not aware that there are actually differences between the various types of framing in terms of semiotic potential. Therefore, terms such as “segregation”, “separation”, integration”, “overlap”, “rhyme” and “contrast” were completely alien to me.

It never occurred to me that “framing” could be integrated into another domain, which is the framing of interior space in offices and school buildings. It was interesting to read that plants, curtains, furniture, lighting and screens are used to segregate spaces, besides solid walls. Having work in the corporate world for two years before entering NIE, I have been exposed to open-concept offices. The first office that I went to for work uses open concept workstations like the one shown below.



Despite the fact that I am surrounded by six other colleagues from the same department in the same room, I quite enjoyed working in such an environment due to several reasons. Firstly, I was able to concentrate on my work more easily without having to face too much distraction. Secondly, I felt that there were some forms of privacy because I was able to engage in private chats with a few colleagues, who shared closer bonds with me, without the fear of being seen or heard by our superiors. Last but not least, I felt more secured working behind my workstation.

However, I disliked the office for my second job because it look exactly like the one illustrated in the picture shown below, except that our tables were all joined together to face the walls.

To make things worse, there were only full length glass panels separating my colleagues and me from our directors. Consequently, we felt extremely uncomfortable and stressful working in such environment, since we were constantly being watched.

Nevertheless, now that I am going to be a teacher, I am in favor of the use of open-plan framing in class. This is because it allows me to monitor the pupils' activities taking place in the class and and keep the class under control at all times. Therefore, I realized that the role one has in an organization can influence the way they view de-segregation of office spaces. Staff at the management levels tends to prefer open-plan framing whereas their subordinates would prefer the opposite.