Multimodal Text

Semiotic refers to the study of sign process; it plays an important role when it comes to teaching. Different semiotic systems can be used to reinforce understanding; they include Spatial, linguistics, gestural, Visual and audio (Bearne, Wolstencroft & United Kingdom Literacy Association, 2007). Combination of any of these two systems forms what is known as multimodal text, for purposes of this assignment visual and linguistics semiotic systems will be used to form a multimodal text shown below.

            Impacting knowledge to children as never been that easy, when children are still young and have just started school they experience problem with language development (In Unsworth, 2011). Children learn and develop their language proficiency by relating pictures and sounds. It is normally said that a single picture speaks a thousand words, this is indeed true, a picture is self-explanatory. Human minds and more so that of children process things in the form of images; it would be therefore difficult to teach a human being without a concept of graphics. It makes both the simple and complex information stick easily to one's mind. Children are poor when it comes to attention; one ought to attract their interest so as to have their attention, one such way of motivating their interests is by using different semiotic systems such as linguistics and visual. Children tend to be bored by words, the use of pictures play an important role in keeping them attentive. Employing these elements makes teaching very easy and interesting. In the multimodal text above the information that was to be disseminated was that some dogs do fly, although this is not possible it is important because it captures the interest of kids. It is important in a storytelling session; it is so plain to say that some dogs can fly; illustrating it using pictures makes it have sense. It enables them to develop their lateral thinking and thus allow them even to understand technical subjects such as mathematics.

            The colour aspect in the image is attracting, this is important because it will capture the interest of kids. Unlike in adult colour is the most important thing to children, something can be interesting, but if the colour used to draw it is dull, it would not attract the attention of kids. Here the written language “some dogs do” and the image brings a complete sentence that some dogs do fly; the dog represents the word “fly”. The text is meant to make children understand certain verbs such as fly; it would be much difficult for a teacher to teach such a verb without combining words and images. Children will keep remembering the word fly simply by relating the image of the dog and the word. In the multimodal text, the cloud-like substance shows that the dog is flying high in the sky, this is the information one gets by looking at the text, there is no explanation to be added on it (In Domínguez, In Bobkina & In Stefanova, 2018). The green landscape is below the “dog”, this gives an impression that it is way above the ground. The text could be boring for adults reading it but it is amazing to children and in the process, they get enriched with language. This way, development of proficient language among kids will be much easy and smooth. The text is not that detailed; this is because kids are not interested in the finer details, the interaction of the two semiotic systems makes the meaning clear.

References

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Bearne, E., Wolstencroft, H., & United Kingdom Literacy Association. (2007). Visual approaches to teaching writing. London: Paul Chapman.

In Domínguez, R. E., In Bobkina, J., & In Stefanova, S. (2018). Teaching literature and language through multimodal texts.

In Unsworth, L. (2011). Multimodal Semiotics: Functional Analysis in Contexts of Education. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, Limited.

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