Language learners’ drawings and textual commentaries as a way to envision goals and aspirations for future language use

Abstract

Written and spoken language are not the only ways to illustrate thinking. Incorporating arts-informed and multimodal ways to communicate can offer new insights for higher education language teaching and learning practices. This study investigates how Finnish as a second language students’ drawings as visualizations support an arts-informed approach to knowledge production in the initial years of language learning and proficiency in higher education in Canada. Further, it explores how students of Finnish represent their aspirations and objectives for their future language use and study through these embodied visualizations. The article focuses on how students visualize their aspirations to learn and use language without having to look for support from English. Grounded in reflective arts-informed language pedagogy, this study employs multisemiotic content analysis to examine a selection of students’ drawings. Through drawing, students visualize their imagined potential selves as future language users in different situations, activities and tasks and with different people. While language learners traditionally express their thoughts through oral and written language, and commonly in English, this study shows that drawings offer an alternative and artistic avenue for knowledge transmission and communication in the early stages of the language learning trajectory. Through reflective research practice, his study also addresses some implications of integrating arts-informed teaching and learning practice into second language pedagogy, encouraging instructors to adapt arts-informed teaching methodologies to align with students’ individual learning trajectories.