Organizing Blogs in an ESL/EFL Class Using the Rule of Thirds

21st-Century Language Skills Organizing Blogs in an ESL/EFL Class Using the Rule of Thirds TAMARA WARHOL KATHERINE RHODES FIELDS University of Mississippi Given the ubiquity of digital media in daily life, students must not only read and write traditional texts, but also those associated with information and multimedia technologies, such as blogs, photo and video sharing sites, social networks, and wikis. In response to the need to teach students to read and write these non-traditional texts, guides and exemplary case studies have been published to help teachers navigate new pedagogical practices. One requisite pedagogical practice in teaching students to compose non-traditional texts is teaching them new forms of organization. This article discusses the importance of compositional organization not only in traditional texts and photographs, but also in blogs. It then addresses how ESL/EFL instructors may help students improve the organization of online compositions by teaching students to use the rule of thirds to frame their digital photographs and incorporate these photographs into blogs. doi: 10.1002/tesj.41 Given the ubiquity of digital media in daily life, educational researchers in general, and within TESOL in particular, have argued that students now must learn multiliteracies (Hull & Hernandez, 2010; Lam, 2000; New London Group, 1996). Students must not only read and write traditional texts, but also those associated with information and multimedia technologies, such as blogs, photo and video sharing sites, social networks, and wikis (Frost, Myatt & Smith, 2009; Myers, 2010). While traditional texts primarily rely on written language to relate content, texts associated with information and multimedia technologies often TESOL Journal 3.4, December 2012 Ó 2012 TESOL International Association 735 impart content by combining audio, gestural, spatial, and visual modalities with written language (New London Group, 1996). Thus, students must also learn to comprehend and compose multimodal texts. In response to the need to teach students multiliteracies, guides (e.g., Langer de Ramirez, 2010) and exemplary case studies (e.g., Herrington, Hodgson, & Moran, 2009; Kasten, 2010) have been published to help teachers navigate new pedagogical practices. One essential pedagogical practice in teaching students multiliteracies is teaching them how to organize multimodal compositions in digital media (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Hull & Hernandez, 2010); this article specifically addresses this issue within an ESL/EFL contexts. First, the article discusses the difficulties of learning how to organize traditional texts, photographs, and blogs. It then addresses how ESL/EFL instructors may help students improve the organization of online compositions by teaching students to use the rule of thirds to frame their digital photographs and incorporate these photographs into blogs. ORGANIZATION IN COMPOSITION Regardless of the medium and mode—digital or print, image or text—organization is essential for a well-crafted composition. The organization of a composition represents the logical and structured arrangement of textual and visual information so that an audience understands the composition (Krages, 2005; Swales & Feak, 2004). Writers may have difficulty organizing their written compositions for a variety of reasons including (a) their English language proficiency level, (b) familiarity with English-medium academic contexts, and (c) cross-cultural rhetorical differences. First, similar to inexperienced writers writing in their first language, ESL/EFL students who have lower English language proficiencies do not have the linguistic resources to communicate connections and articulate higher-level analyses (Hyland, 2002). Second, ESL/EFL students, who have had no or limited experience in Englishmedium schools, colleges, or universities, do not yet have the communicative competence to fully participate in these environments (Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008). Finally, ESL/EFL students may have culturally based writing styles, which they then 736 TESOL Journal use in their ESL/EFL writing (Casanave, 2004).1 Thus, ESL/EFL students may face an array of challenges in organizing their written compositions. Novice photographers face comparable challenges in composition. General access to digital cameras, or mobile phones with camera capabilities, and the means to easily share photographs on the Internet has led some scholars to suggest that the dominant form of communication is through images rather than talk or writing (Kress & Van Leewen, 2006). Images produced by casual or novice photographers, however, are rarely considered high art; instead, they are usually snapshots of ordinary events taken so that the photographer will have a durable, if modifiable, image. Bull (2010) suggests characteristics of snapshots include, but are not limited to, tilted horizon, unconventional cropping, eccentric framing, distant subject, and blurring. Amateur photographers typically point and shoot. They usually do not have the desire or the training to create a composed picture. In other words, like inexperienced writers’ and/or ESL/EFL students’ compositions, they suffer from, among other problems, lack of organization. Organizational problems in photographs and text are compounded when they are combined in a genre such as a blog. BLOGS Blogs, or weblogs, have been defined as “frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronicle sequence” (Herring, Schefit, Wright, & Bonus, 2005, p. 142), and often include not only text but also images or video. Describing the blogging genre, Herring et al. (2005) note that many blogs are individual and personal forms of expression instead of objective reports of public news with related interactive commentary. 1 The study of culturally different writing styles is named contrastive rhetoric and has been highly controversial for a variety of reasons, including vague definitions of culture and methodological inadequacies. Nevertheless, second language writing researchers continue to examine the role of culture in shaping writing practices. Recent research, however, has called for a new contrastive rhetoric or critical contrastive rhetoric that focuses on examining the imposition of English language cultural norms on second language writers (see Casanave, 2004, regarding the controversy). This article does not propose organizational norms for blogs; instead, it offers a teaching technique that may be used either to promote culturally specific organizational practices or conform to the norms of English language blogs in intensive English programs in the United States. The Rule of Thirds 737 Despite, or perhaps because of, these differences from other academic writing genres, language instructors often assign individual or class blog assignments. Within the discipline of TESOL, blogging has been portrayed as a language learning tool (Godwin-Jones, 2006; Soares de Almeida, 2008; Warchauser & Grimes, 2007), demonstrated to increase second language writing fluency and language learner motivation (Bloch, 2007; Lee, 2010), and recommended as a means of promoting multiliteracies (Choo, 2010). Yet, increasing language learner motivation or improving ESL/EFL writing fluency does not just occur by assigning a blogging task. Arena and Jefferson (2008) note that instructors must guide ESL/EFL students through blogging tasks to realize these goals. If one of the goals of a blog assignment is to improve students’ organization in compositions with textual and visual components, teaching students the rule of thirds provides a simple procedure for them to follow and relate to designing multimodal compositions. In the next section the rule of thirds is explained as a guide to organizing photographs and blogs, and then a blogging assignment, Perception and Projection, is presented as an exemplar of teaching the rule of thirds. THE RULE OF THIRDS ESL/EFL instructors may teach students the rule of thirds to assist them to create well-crafted visual and textual blogs. The rule of thirds is a method of framing used in photography to decide what to include and exclude in a picture (Krages, 2005; Peterson, 2003). Decisions about what to include and exclude may be individually or culturally determined (Ewald & Lightfoot, 2001). For example, some cultures prohibit photographs of people and some individuals do not like to take photographs without people (Goody, 1997). A decision, such as whether or not to include individuals inhabiting a certain space, however, implies the imposition of an organizational framework. Lacking an organizational framework, many beginning photographers believe that they must include as much detail as possible to convey a particular interpretation of a scene or event, a strategy that often fails (Ewald & Lightfoot, 2001). In contrast, the rule of thirds offers a method of organizing detail into an image that relays a photographer’s message. 738 TESOL Journal The rule of thirds is best understood from the perspective of a photographer looking through the viewfinder of a camera. The photographer mentally breaks up the image in the viewfinder into thirds horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. In other words, the viewfinder is divided into nine equal squares. The middle square is the focal point (see Figure 1). If the photographer avoids framing an image in the center of the viewfinder, the center square, then the photographer has followed the rule of thirds (Krages, 2005; Peterson, 2003). Although seemingly counterintuitive by deemphasizing the focal point, the rule of thirds prevents pictures from being dull, boring, and lacking balance. To make any image more interesting, accomplishing a shift in perspective within the picture plane will help a photographer accomplish a visually more complete and interesting photo. Although named a rule, the rule of thirds is more of a guideline for those starting to take photographs (Peterson, 2003). If placing the object in the center of the composition more accurately portrays the photographer’s intentions, the photographer should center the image. The photographer should merely be aware that by doing so, the image might suffer the consequences. Choices made compositionally suggest the intentions of the artist and allow meaning to be clarified (Bull, 2010; Krages, 2005). When photographers have doubts about how to depict an image, they should use the rule of thirds. Instructors may also teach ESL/EFL students to apply the rule of thirds in the design of blogs to improve their composition. Figure 1. The rule of thirds The Rule of Thirds 739 Assigning blogging tasks in ESL/EFL contexts serves a dual function (Horner & Trimbur, 2002). On the one hand, students who blog have the opportunity to improve their English writing; on the other, they have the opportunity to improve their ability to create well-designed online compositions. Once ESL/EFL students have learned the rule of thirds, they may directly apply it to taking photographs and positioning these photographs in their blogs in a one-to-one relation. Furthermore, students may use the rule of thirds to organize English language text on their blog. The rule scaffolds students as they learn multiliteracies in English (Smith, 2009). Using this rule, students should be able to begin to produce photographs and blog spaces that are not only interesting but also logically constructed. In teaching the rule of thirds, ESL/EFL instructors not only further multiliteracies education but also provide a concrete means to guide students through the organization of their blogging tasks. The next section offers a sample blogging assignment using the rule of thirds to teach organization. PERCEPTION AND PROJECTION Perception and Projection is a blogging assignment from unpublished pedagogical materials that seek to use techniques from the visual arts to promote language learning (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Warhol & Fields, 2010). In this unit, ESL/EFL students are required to write a blog about their stereotypes of U.S. citizens and include pictures that illustrate these stereotypes. The rule of thirds is introduced to the students as a heuristic for taking the photographs, organizing the text, and situating the photographs within the text. Prior to the specific blogging assignment, students participate in a series of more traditional language learning tasks designed to activate their schema about stereotypes, introduce English language vocabulary about stereotypes, and model blogging (Bloch, 2007; Fraiberg, 2010). Tasks include discussions about first impressions and commonly held beliefs as well as reading articles and watching documentary video clips about Asian Americans. Students then write a draft of their blog about the stereotypes that they believe the video clips and readings show. The purpose of the 740 TESOL Journal writing assignment is for students to practice identifying their subjective assessments of a topic and providing evidence to support these assessments. Having begun their exploration of the topic of stereotypes and practiced reading and writing about stereotypes in English, the instructor explicitly teaches the ESL/EFL students about the rule of thirds and how to use it. The students then receive an assignment similar to the following: Write a blog entry that discusses stereotypes about the United States and people in the United States. To support the argument of your blog entry, take photos using the rule of thirds as a guide. Then, once again using the rule of thirds, organize your text and place your photos in the most appropriate place to support your argument. Students thus use the rule of thirds when they take their photographs, write their text, and position their photographs within the text of the blog in support of their argument. To further guide students through online composition, students receive oral feedback in class and written feedback on their blogs from their peers and instructors. DISCUSSION Educational and TESOL scholars now perceive a pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) as requisite for success in a digital world. Yet, ESL/EFL students do not acquire multiliteracies in English just by composing blogs. Rather, ESL/ EFL instructors must guide them through organizing a logical and visually appealing composition (Arena & Jefferson, 2008; Bezemer & Kress, 2008). Teaching ESL/EFL students the rule of thirds provides a simple procedure for them to follow and relate to designing multimodal compositions. THE AUTHORS Tamara Warhol is assistant professor of linguistics and TESL and director of the Intensive English Program at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on the development of academic literacy in biological sciences, religious studies, and TESOL. The Rule of Thirds 741 Katherine Rhodes Fields holds an MFA in printmaking and an MA in modern languages with emphasis in TESL from the University of Mississippi. She is an instructor of art at Houston Community College where she explores visual language through her artwork, research, and teaching. REFERENCES Arena, C., & Jefferson, C. T. (2008). Blogging in the language classroom: It doesn’t “simply happen.” TESL-EJ, 11(4). 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