Visual Literacy From the Perspective of the VTS Method

The purpose of this article is to investigate visual literacy from the perspective of the VTS （Visual Thinking Strategies） method. The authors examine the viewpoints of seven American elementary school teachers on visual literacy and its meanings in the context of the VTS method. Data collection was done using a semi-structured questionnaire, which was followed by theory-driven content analysis. The authors emphasize that when supporting holistic development in a teaching context, it is the interconnected nature of aesthetics, growth and the learner＇s learning which is more important than developing special skills, like visual literacy. In the teaching context visual literacy and language development should be acknowledged in pedagogy and research.

Visual Literacy in Secondary EFL Education in China:A Semiotic Perspective

Human societies use a variety of semiotic modes for meaning construction.The ubiquity of images in today’s world,alone or in combination with other modes,makes competence with images or visual literacy a prerequisite of competence in life.Now identified as an essential literacy skill for 21st century learners in the digital age,visual literacy has been introduced into contemporary English curricula in a number of countries around the world.In China,the skill of viewing is added as one important component of language competence in National English Curriculum Standards for High School issued in 2017,thereby making the cultivation of visual literacy vital to secondary EFL education.This paper aims to present and discuss the current situation of visual literacy in secondary EFL education in China.It first provides an analysis of the ways of visual-verbal interplay for meaning construction in textbooks,and finds an uneven distribution of image-text relations in the current EFL textbooks,with a majority of images playing a supportive or illustrative role.Then it explicates the bi-dimensional three-level construct of visual literacy that is specified in the EFL curriculum,with which the subskills of visual literacy assessed in the latest large-scale EFL tests are compared,with a view to finding out the degree of correspondence between the subskills measured in the tests and the subskills expected in the curriculum.The result shows that only one dimension of reading visual texts is assessed,and the other dimension of writing visual texts is not evidenced.Finally suggestions are made for varied visual inputs,an expanded construct of visual literacy,and improvement of the washback effect of tests.

Cultivation of Translators for Multimodal Translation in the New Media Age

In the 21st century,the development of digital and new media technologies has ushered in an age of pervasive multimodal communication,which has significantly amplified the role of multimodal translation in facilitating crosscultural exchanges.Despite the profound impact of these developments,the prevailing translation pedagogy remains predominantly focused on the enhancement of linguistic translation skills,with noticeable neglect of the imperative to cultivate students’competencies in multimodal translation.Based on the distinctive characteristics and challenges that multimodal translation presents in the context of new media,this study delves into the formulation of educational objectives and curriculum design for the training of multimodal translators.The intent is to propose a framework that can guide the preparation of translators who are adept and equipped to navigate the complexities and demands of the contemporary age.

Parents and Children Reading Together: Expanding Shared Book-Reading Across Genres

In this conceptual article we explore parents’shared book reading(SBR)interactions with their preschoolers across different book genres in their natural home settings.We consider the unique and shared contributions of narrative,informational,wordless,and alphabet picturebooks,and how reading across genres can increase children’s involvement in the interaction,deepen their content knowledge,expand their vocabulary,and strengthen their visual literacy.Beyond the benefi ts for children,we discuss the advantages for parents of reading from diff erent genres and highlight directions for future research.

Comparative evaluations of visualization onboarding methods

Comprehending and exploring large and complex data is becoming increasingly important for a diverse population of users in a wide range of application domains.Visualization has proven to be well-suited in supporting this endeavor by tapping into the power of human visual perception.However,non-experts in the field of visual data analysis often have problems with correctly reading and interpreting information from visualization idioms that are new to them.To support novices in learning how to use new digital technologies,the concept of onboarding has been successfully applied in other fields and first approaches also exist in the visualization domain.However,empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such approaches is scarce.Therefore,we conducted three studies with Amazon Mechanical Turk(MTurk)workers and students investigating visualization onboarding at different levels:(1)Firstly,we explored the effect of visualization onboarding,using an interactive step-by-step guide,on user performance for four increasingly complex visualization techniques with time-oriented data:a bar chart,a horizon graph,a change matrix,and a parallel coordinates plot.We performed a between-subject experiment with 596 participants in total.The results showed that there are no significant differences between the answer correctness of the questions with and without onboarding.Particularly,participants commented that for highly familiar visualization types no onboarding is needed.However,for the most unfamiliar visualization type—the parallel coordinates plot—performance improvement can be observed with onboarding.(2)Thus,we performed a second study with MTurk workers and the parallel coordinates plot to assess if there is a difference in user performances on different visualization onboarding types:step-by-step,scrollytelling tutorial,and video tutorial.The study revealed that the video tutorial was ranked as the most positive on average,based on a sentiment analysis,followed by the scrollytelling tutorial and the interactive step-by-step guide.(3)As videos are a traditional method to support users,we decided to use the scrollytelling approach as a less prevalent way and explore it in more detail.Therefore,for our third study,we gathered data towards users’experience in using the in-situ scrollytelling for the VA tool Netflower.The results of the evaluation with students showed that they preferred scrollytelling over the tutorial integrated in the Netflower landing page.Moreover,for all three studies we explored the effect of task difficulty.In summary,the in-situ scrollytelling approach works well for integrating onboarding in a visualization tool.Additionally,a video tutorial can help to introduce interaction techniques of visualization.