Week 8: Bookworm

This week we are analyzing textbooks and looking for the meaning in the pictures they use. Visual rhetoric- a subtle but very important aspect of learning. Taylor-Mendes, Giashi, and Hinkel's readings all demonstrate and explain how much materials, specifically textbooks, can influence students an ESL classroom. Giashi explained the emotional difficulties students go through when the materials' lack of diversity makes them feel inferior to their teacher's or classmates' culture. This idea is horrible- the feeling that you cannot succeed like the models in the books because you are different than them is not a message we should be sending. In Hinkel's Chapter 11, he discussed how important it is to have a textbook that emphasizes culture and agree. In the Taylor-Mendes article, the author states that “it is important for teachers to consider the images present in English-language textbooks prior to entering the classroom” and that “teachers not only need to draw attention to the content of the image, but they also need to initiate discussions about the issues that the image implies”  Have a discussion about the way people and cultures are portrayed in textbooks in the classroom is very important. Facilitating this discussion is a bit tricky however, it can help break down global barriers and 'release' certain ethnicities bound to only certain countries.
I find this topic to be fascinating, especially in areas of language education. I have noticed this in some textbooks that my elementary school distributed to us; the ideal students would all be white, cute, and smiling while people of other ethnicities or with handicaps were all featured students who had one singular trait attached to them. Images go further and highlight how gender roles or race are perceived in a culture. This creates stereotypes which learners pick up and and 'learn'-just like they would learn new vocabulary or grammar rules. As teachers we must recognize the images, recognize what they are portraying, how students might interpret them, and start conversations with students on how these stereotypes create barriers so they can fight to overturn them.