Social Networking, Workplace, and Entertainment Literacies: The Out-of-School Literate Lives of Newcomer Latina/o Adolescents

• In Event: Leveraging Home-Language Literacies in the Education of Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

This collective case study investigated the range and purpose of the multilingual out-of-school literacies of four Latina/o adolescent English learners who were new arrivals. Students demonstrated sophisticated transnational literacies on the social networking site of Facebook, in their workplaces, and through Spanish entertainment media. A cross-case analysis suggests that a narrow monolingual, monocultural, and monomodal view of immigrant students divests them of their greatest resources. Their literacy practices demonstrate that they are transnational, emergent bilinguals who competently engage in multimodal means of communication across multiple linguistic, cultural, social, and geographic borders. Educators must reconceptualize school-based literacy to leverage the 21st century literacies that immigrant youth use outside of the classroom.

Author

• Mary Amanda Stewart, Texas Woman's University