Playing With Cultural Artifacts: Young Bilingual Children's Multimodal Meaning-Making Activities at Home

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Korean Family Language Practices: Transnational Perspectives

Abstract

Situated in multimodal literacy perspectives and cultural-historical activity theory perspective of tool/artifact mediation, this study examined young bilingual children’s meaning making with various semiotic resources drawn from their literate experiences when playing at home. The findings highlighted complexities of children’s meaning making processes and creative use of resources in their play. Furthermore, children’s play demonstrated their application of and informal learning of literacy processes that included making intertextual connections by recontextualizing and repurposing textual elements, engaging in complex composing processes by negotiating with others and affordances of resources, and negotiating with parents’ cultural beliefs and home rules. This study urges educators to reimagine opportunities to provide multimodal literacy learning in public education to facilitate young children’s literacy learning.

Author

• Kwangok Song, The University of Kansas