Fostering EFL Learners’ Ecological Literacy Through A Multimodal Composing Project:an Action Research

With the development of the economy and society,the increasingly serious global ecological crisis forces people to reflect on the relationship between people and nature.In order to break the ecological dilemma and solve ecological problems,academic circles began to turn to the study of ecological literacy,paying special attention to the role of language in cultivating ecological literacy.Multimodal composing can expose students to a variety of technical platforms and integrate language,vision and symbol resources into multimodal works.As a new social practice of meaning-making,multimodal composing can become the potential to cultivate English learners’ ecological literacy.Ecological literacy refers to the ability of human beings to construct ecological discourse based on society,which includes three dimensions;ecological knowledge,ecological emotion and ecological behavior.It requires people to transfer ecological knowledge,arouse ecological affect and trigger ecological behavior with the help of language analysis.Previous studies have explored many ecological paths to improve students’ ecological literacy,but most of them focus on improving learners’ cognition of content knowledge,ignoring the separation of language learning,ecological cultivation and language cultivation.Therefore,This action research study mainly focuses on three questions:(1)How does the MC project scaffold EFL learners’ ecological knowledge?(2)How does the MC project scaffold EFL learners’ ecological affect?(3)How does the MC project scaffold EFL learners’ ecological behavior?Therefore,this research adopts the paradigm of action research,and specifically observes the representation of students’ecological literacy in the process of multimodal composing in three dimensions;knowledge,affect and behavior.Under the guidance of the theoretical framework of ecological literacy,20 English majors from a class at a university of China participated in this research.Semi-structured interviews,observation,written analysis,slide analysis and are used as data sources.The findings of this study are as follows:Firstly,The knowledge dimension of English learners’ ecological literacy has been improved,including linguistic knowledge and ecological knowledge,The meaning of different information and symbol resources makes the content more specific,and learners use compensation strategies to overcome language difficulties,thus improving learners’linguistic knowledge and ecological knowledge.Secondly,The affective dimension of English learners’ ecological reading and writing ability has been improved,including their affect for human beings marine environment,marine life and the MC project.The curriculum space created by learners through multimodal composing transcends the limitations of time and space to show their critical emotional affect towards ecological issues,Thirdly,The behavioral dimension of English learners’ ecological literacy has been improved,including consumption,disposal and reuse,The main reason for the change of learners’ecological behavior is the patterning of different scenarios,such as group tasks,such as designing posters and interviewing local residents.This study systematically investigates students’ multimodal composing process by combining statistical data with content analysis,which can not only provide new empirical evidence for the significance of multimodal composing in promoting learning,but also help to inspire strategy-based teaching methods in second language learning,so as to maximize the teaching potential of multimodal composing.At the same time,this study puts forward corresponding suggestions on cultivation of ecological literacy.