Intermodality and Multilingual Re-instantiation: Joint Construction in Bilingual Genre Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper discusses the roles of intermodality and multilingualism in a genre pedagogy program aimed to improve students’ literacy in Indonesia. It draws on data from an intervention program which extended the Reading to Learn (R2L) genre-based literacy pedagogy to embed English literacy learning in biology lessons for Indonesian junior high school students. This bilingual R2L program is innovative in that it involves the use of written and spoken Bahasa Indonesia and English for both teaching materials and instruction. This particular study focuses on the final stage of the program: The collaborative writing process known as joint construction. This is conducted in the bilingual R2L program by jointly making notes from Indonesian (L1) reading texts, jointly re-instantiating these notes as English (L2) lexis, and then using these L2 notes to jointly construct new L2 texts. The methodology is thus intermodal and multilingual, from written L1 texts, through oral dictation to L1 notes, then through bilingual discussion to re-instantiation as written L2 lexis, and finally through further bilingual discussion to re-instantiation as written L2 text. The study applies genre and register theory to closely examine classroom interactions in Joint Construction, from the perspectives of their structuring, the intermodal sourcing of meanings, and relations between teachers and learners. Evidence from student assessments suggest these designed applications of intermodality and multilingual reinstantiation are highly effective in the development of autonomous skills in L2 science writing. This article aims to describe how and why they are so effective.

Keywords

• genre pedagogy
• bilingual education
• joint construction
• EFL
• Reading to Learn
• intermodality