Dr. Bruna Sommer Farias describes her approach to genre pedagogy – and the article that our student Blair Richards published about it in FLTMAG
We take immense pride in showcasing our students’ achievements, especially when their work exemplifies the forefront of world language education. Currently, the use of texts and multimodality has brought more inclusivity and meaning to the study of another language. Blair Richards published an article for the FLTMAG titled “A Multiliteracies Approach to TikTok in the Classroom”. Blair’s work was developed for her middle school students learning French, and it based on the project she created for the course Literacy in Foreign Language Teaching course (FLT 841 Special Topics) taught by Dr. Bruna Sommer-Farias in Spring 2024.
This Literacy in FLT course, offered every Spring, is designed to equip educators with strategies to teach literacy using authentic multimodal texts. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as genre pedagogies and multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2020), the assignments prepare teachers with practical tools to develop students’ proficiency through literacy.
Part of the project from which Blair’s work originated invited teachers to create their own genres to put themselves in their students’ shoes and learn what types of knowledge would be required from their own students to create that genre. By encouraging teachers to document their experience, this project also positioned teachers as authors and producers of knowledge to be used beyond the classroom and guide other fellow teachers interested in using texts in their classroom. In this sense, this final project encouraged student-teachers to become real authors in a way to model the same pedagogy for their own students.
Genre pedagogies and multiliteracies are the main foci of Dr. Sommer-Farias’ research. She has an upcoming book chapter in co-authorship with Dr. Myriam Abdel-Malek (University of Pittsburgh) for the Handbook of Research in World Language Instruction edited by Victoria Russell and Francis Troyan. In this chapter, they pinpoint how to implement text-based approaches in world language classes with practical examples for teachers of any world language. Additionally, her latest in-progress project with focus on genre knowledge development of world language teachers was presented in the American Conference on Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Houston, TX, in March 2024.
Read Blair’s article, watch the Tiktok video she created, and access her lesson plans here:
A Multiliteracies Approach to TikTok in the Classroom
by Blair Richards | French teacher in Indiana | MAFLT ’25
Read the full article by alumna Blair Richards in the FLTMAG
