John S. Knox

Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages

This article is a study of visual, verbal and visual-verbal communication on the home pages of three English-language online newspapers from different national cultures. Important similarities in the visual-verbal structure of news stories and home pages between the three newspapers are identified. Each newspaper demonstrates a similar tendency towards atomization of news texts with which readers interact over short time scales, and a tendency towards greater consistency in the visual-verbal design of news across longer timescales. A genre-specific visual grammar for online newspaper home pages is emerging in response to the demands of the new medium and historical and social trends in news reporting.

Online news galleries, photojournalism and the photo essay

This paper investigates the online news gallery as a site for new genres of multimodal news reporting, and the extent to which such galleries may be used as a method of news storytelling. News media websites are now well established and the relative ease with which multimedia can be incorporated into such websites has led us to question the extent to which galleries exploit the semiotic potential of the web to tell stories in new ways, or even to draw on long established traditions like the photo essay. We draw on two (of three) phases of data collection and analysis in this paper: an exploratory survey of a small number of galleries in established online newspapers; and an international survey of English language online newspapers, investigating the uptake of galleries and other multimedia. To tell a story, or not to tell a story: that is the question, and the answer, as online news gallery authors exploit the potential of galleries to varying degrees.

Realisation(s): Systemic-Functional Linguistics and the Language Classroom

A major aspiration of university-based language teacher education is that students will acquire a body of current knowledge about language teaching and apply it in their classrooms. This is a common expectation, and many MATESOL courses now incorporate reflective, task-based and action research approaches. However, there is little empirical evidence in the field of applied linguistics that teachers do indeed adapt their teaching on the basis of their new knowledge; even less is known about the tensions this brings for them in terms of changing pedagogy. Also, teacher educators rarely seem to explore the extent to which their instruction has achieved the impact they anticipate (but see some of the papers in Bailey & Nunan, 1996; Freeman & Richards, 1996; see also Lamb, 1995). These comments reflect our own situations and assumptions until 2001. In Semester 1, from March to June, we co-taught a Masters grammar course based on systemicfunctional linguistics (SFL) at Macquarie University, Sydney. Previously, we had relied mainly on the official university course evaluation system, which had given generally positive feedback. Having taught our various units, we (naively, and surprisingly, in hindsight) assumed that students would inevitably take up our theoretical explanations and ideas for practice into their future teaching.

Issues in the education of TESOL teachers by distance education

Language teacher education by distance (LTED) has become a widespread and important practice in the preservice and in‐service education of teachers, and in language education internationally. The advent of the Internet has combined with developments in other information communication technologies, the globalisation of English, and the marketisation of education to afford a rapid increase in the number of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages) teacher education programs, and greater variety in the ways in which teaching and learning is mediated in these programs. This article reports on an international survey of TESOL teacher education providers, and considers the status of language teaching qualifications earned by distance, changes in the institutional roles of language teacher educators, and the current state of research into LTED.

A framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries: What makes a “good” picture gallery?

The development of digital technology in recent years has led to a revolution in news production and dissemination. In terms of production, we have witnessed a fundamental shift towards visual story-telling. Images dominate the verbal story space and have the potential to become the story themselves. Beyond this, they are also creating unique spaces for themselves (e.g. the online news gallery), with new multimodal genres posing challenges for practitioners and analysts alike. The potential effects of such fundamental shifts on the professional news story-telling practices of the legacy news media provide a rich research opportunity for understanding both how and whether news organisations fulfil their mandate of making sense of the plethora of information that is now available. In this paper, we concern ourselves with one particular innovation in visual news reporting – the online news gallery, or picture gallery in journalism terms. We report on a qualitative analysis of 35 galleries from 12 English-language newspapers with online presence from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, and interrogate the choices made by institutions in composing this particular type of multimodal “text”, as it is situated in a professional, news story-telling context. In doing so, we explore how a systemic-functional semiotic approach to multimodal news discourse may help us to access the meaning potential of this emerging genre as a vehicle for multimodal digital news reporting, present a framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries and consider its implications for the education of media practitioners.

Visual minimalism in hard news : thumbnail faces on the SMH Online home page

Thumbnail images depicting the face of a social actor were the most common type of image used in hard-news stories on the home page of the Sydney Morning Herald online (smh online), a high-circulation Australian daily broadsheet, between 2002 and 2006. While not all online newspapers use such images to the same extent as the smh online, close-up thumbnails of faces are commonplace on online newspaper home pages in general. This paper examines the use of these “thumbnail faces” on the smh online home page. Over four years (and across four page-design periods), these images were used more frequently, despite the fact that they function in a very different way to traditional hard-news images. Thumbnail faces cannot “tell stories”, nor “provide evidence”, but they play an important interpersonal role in individual news stories, collectively on the home page, and over time in the discursive relationship between the smh online and its readership.

2.2 Interpreting Websites in Educational Contexts: A Social-Semiotic, Multimodal Approach

This chapter reports on three research projects concerned with websites. All three have adopted a social-semiotic, multimodal approach (cf. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic. London: Arnold; Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Oxon: Routledge; Kress G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold, Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006 [1996]) Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd edn). London: Routledge) and developed new tools for understanding the complexity of website design and its implications for educational contexts. They have focused, however, on different challenges and types of hypermedia: (i) user orientation within websites for children, (ii) knowledge construction in online educational interactives for children, and (iii) news design in online newspapers and the literacy demands online newspapers present for TESOL and applied linguistics students. This paper opens by outlining the common starting point of all three projects in relation to the data – treating websites as meaningful texts. It then proceeds to consider differences in the questions and types of websites explored in each study, and how these differences have influenced the way social-semiotic multimodal tools for analysing the data have been developed in each study and complemented with other tools for collecting and analysing data (e.g. interviews with website users, designers and media practitioners). The paper concludes with a brief discussion of challenges that websites continue to present for educational research.

How to author a picture gallery

Picture galleries offer photojournalism an opportunity to shine. Despite the considerable technological advances of recent decades, picture galleries typically fail to realise their potential for storytelling; rather they present an incohesive series of image–caption complexes collected under a headline. Here, we offer a set of guidelines regarding the sourcing, selection and sequencing of compelling images coupled with agile writing of leads and captions that complement the kind of visual story being told. Such investment in the authoring of picture galleries creates opportunities to provide readers with an engaging and more memorable experience.

Reflections on learning TESOL at a distance

CONTENTS Foreword, David Nunan 1 Online Distance TESOL in the 21st Century - From the Trench Liz England PART I - LEARNING IN ONLINE DISTANCE TESOL SETTINGS 2 Why Be an Online Learner in TESOL? Sue Garton and Julian Edge 3 Feedback in the Mediation of Learning in Online Language Teacher Education Carmen Contijoch, Anne Burns and Christopher N. Candlin 4 Addressing the Challenges of Online Assessment: Practical Solutions for TESOL Instructors Steven Humphries and Florin Mihai 5 Reflections on Learning TESOL at a Distance Miranda Legg and John S. Knox 6 Life after On-Line Learning Fiona Copland and Sue Garton PART II - TEACHING IN ONLINE DISTANCE TESOL 7 Creating Communities of Practice: Active Collaboration between Students Datta Kaur Khalsa 8 Teaching Research Methods in an Online Distance Course Paula Garcia McAllister 9 Building an Online Community of Inquiry with Student-moderated Discussions Joan Kang Shin and Beverly Bickel 10 Developing Communities of Practice at a Distance Steve Mann and Gerald Talandis, Jr. 11 Investigating Assessment in Online Discussions: A Case Study of Peer Assessment in an LTED Course David R. Hall and John S. Knox PART III - ADMINISTRATION OF ONLINE DISTANCE TESOL PROGRAMS 12 Administration of Online Distance Education: Academic Services in Support of ESOL E-learners Leslie Opp-Beckman 13 Rewards and Challenges of Online Program Administration David R. Hall and John S. Knox 14 Planning a Distance Education Course for Language Teachers: What Administrators Need to Consider Deborah Healey PART IV - LOOKING AHEAD 15 The Future of Online TESOL Liz England and David R. Hall About the Contributors Index

Participant perspectives and critical reflections on language teacher education by distance

Language teaching is a profession which is international in character. Language teachers often work and study in foreign countries, and distance education has become very important in the education of language teachers. Drawing on two international surveys, this paper explores language teacher education by distance from the perspective of students (i.e. trainee or practicing language teachers) and teacher-educators in such distance programs. There are significant educational advantages for language teachers who choose to study by distance, and e-learning technologies have enhanced these benefits. This paper also includes an in-depth analysis of the qualitative survey responses from two individual students, highlighting an individualized perspective on the data that complements the ‘collective’ analysis, and provides additional insights into how student experiences of such programs can vary widely, and how such disparities may be addressed.