Abstract
Literacy as well as literary education increasingly play an essential role in English as a foreign language pedagogy. This chapter seeks to establish a relationship between the development of literacy and narrative empathy with primary students in the English as a foreign language classroom. After designing a didactic sequence based on picture books and other multimodal resources and then implementing it in a fourth-grade class, the authors qualitatively assessed students' ability to describe and identify in English the feelings and motivations of literary characters. The findings reveal that primary students reflect upon the narrative and affective situations encountered in the stories they read and were able to engage in a process of meaning-making in English.
TopObjectives
The concepts of literacy and Narrative Empathy share certain principles: both develop through meaning-making and textual reflection. In light of this congruity, our research asks: “In what ways does implementing a Didactic Sequence based on picture books and other multimodal resources develop students’ Literacy and Narrative Empathy in the English as a Foreign Language classroom?” Other key research objectives include:
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To analyze how students understand the situations of literary characters and the implications of this understanding on Narrative Empathy development.
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To assess how the different activities presented in the Didactic Sequence promote students’ ability to reflect upon and explain the emotional states of characters.
After the Didactic Sequence was performed in a grade four class in a public school in the city of Valencia, we asked students to describe and identify the literary character’s feelings and reflect upon their motivations in English via a specific emotions vocabulary.
In the following sections, we first elucidate our approach to literacy and the utility of literacy education in foreign language teaching. Second, we present the multiliteracies framework and its relationship with English literacy development through picture books and the aesthetic experience they generate. Third, we elaborate on the notion of emotional literacy and its bearing upon the concepts of empathy and Narrative Empathy. Finally, we assess the didactic implications for Narrative Empathy in literacy development in the English as a Foreign Language classroom.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Literary Education: A pedagogical process through which the student, as a result of contact and interaction with a text, has access to meaningful learning that fosters critical thinking, and the development of literary competence. ( Reyes-Torres, 2019 ).
Literary Competence: The ability to understand and recognize a series of linguistic and literary conventions that allow the analysis of a text based on what are considered basic and essential concepts.
Narrative Empathy: The perspective-taking ability that allows students to relate to the characters in a story and their situation.
Aesthetic Reading: The type of reading experience that engages students and provokes positive feelings.
Literacy: A dynamic and multidimensional process of meaning-making that enable students to grasp information, organize ideas, exchange perspectives and reflect critically on a variety of sociocultural contexts (Reyes-Torres & Matilde-Portalés, 2020 AU50: The in-text citation "Reyes-Torres & Matilde-Portalés, 2020" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).