Objects and information

I write here about a small number of objects that I use as exemplars. ey have all been discussed in the sections above and have been chosen for their significance.

Menus

During our trip planning sessions we looked at the menus for two of the cafes we planned to visit. ese menus were formal, wrien objects with a specific pur- pose but they offered more complex affordances than this within the class. In the planning lesson the menu for the city farm was the focus of intense aention and it shared different kinds of information. It was a language learning object used to teach the learners new words such as porridge and cappuccino and with this, information about British culture. It also exposed rules about what to do with a menu; when asked to practice ordering A3 said she would have anything and T1 told her you have to choose something.

e emotional affordances of the menu were also significant; these centred around worry about going to the cafe and reassurance that it was safe. e reassurance did not come from the object but from T1, me and other learners. e CVI menu did not need the same mediation as our previous experience of going to the cafe meant the group did not express the same concerns. Instead there was a joke about A10 not liking her drink last time. At the end of both lessons the learners put the menus in their folders and they became more fixed as language learning objects. e menus were part of language learning, information sharing and cafe going, and intersected these different practices.

Bus timetables

Bus timetables were a significant informative object particularly because of how their affordances changed in relation to people and places. e first interaction with a bus timetable was when I showed them a printed version. None of the learners could identify what it was when passed around the classroom. is led T1 to the conclusion that she needed to spend some time looking at how to read tables. It also led to a lengthy discussion about their experiences of catching buses focusing on feelings, problems, and coping strategies.

lile interest when I showed them how to read the timetable. Sharing informa- tion about how to read the timetable seemed less important than the experience of having a nice time on a trip. For our second trip I made the decision not to show them the bus timetable saying to T1 I could not find a simple enough version. e discussion about geing the bus again did not focus on the skills needed to read the timetable and plan the journey but rather on one learner’s worry about geing a bus with men. e bus timetable was an invisible ob- ject here and codified information about bus times and destinations was not the important information. On the final trip A8 told me where we should go to change buses, sharing her knowledge with me. e activity of how to read a bus timetable therefore seemed to be far less important than affective experiences about bus travel.

Signs

Our trips meant that we encountered a range of signs and notices. e status of these as informative objects varied. At the city farm I read notices out loud to learners paraphrasing where I judged it useful. I saw T1 and V1 doing the same but was not aware of any learners looking at the signs. On our return to the classroom T1 had taken lots of photographs of signs that she explained to learn- ers and this became a classroom exercise. Aer our final visit to the museum, I told the learners that I was impressed because they could now read some of the texts in the museum. e signs at the museum were also formal and institutional but they told a personal story meaning that they were accessible to learners in a way the signs at the farm may not have been. At the museum I chose the text about the man geing married because of its simple language and accessible story and supported the learner in reading it. I was then still mediating the infor- mation but in a different way. e learners were also a year further on in their language learning which meant they were interacting differently with informa- tion. For me the act of reading the sign was as significant as the information it contained; it was sharing the information you can come to the museum and read things. e teleoaffective aspects of information sharing were then significant here. Interaction with signs should also be seen as part of the wider interaction these learners have with wrien texts which were limited by their literacy and language.

Videos and photographs

I am looking here at photographs and videos as informative objects and these were primarily digital. It is outside the scope of this study to consider digital technologies in their fullest sense and here I look at them as a mode for shar- ing images. Digital images were used in lessons and at break times bridging language learning, social interaction and information sharing. When learners showed videos or photographs it was generally about their home countries or their families. ey also took a large number of photographs and videos on the first and third trip. ey took these photographs on their own devices and on class tablets.

ere were similarities between the video A10 played of her father singing, and another occasion when A8 brought in printed photographs of her daughter’s wedding. ese were passed round the class and talked about in detail. Both contributed to the intimacy of the classroom and were only shown because of the intimacy that already existed. On another occasion in a break time A18 used her phone to show me pictures she had taken in her home country when I said I did not know very much about it.

T1 regularly searched for photographs on the Internet to explain English words but video was used far more rarely for teaching purposes. One occasion where T1 played a video of a panda playing in the snow in New York showed the potential of video for language learning and information sharing. e video encouraged the class to talk about the weather in New York and then in Pakistan as well as where pandas came from. It was also remembered by learners when we talked about it later.

Visual images oen seemed to be more accessible than writing; however, this kind of object still needed to be mediated. is could be seen in the discussion of the Zumba leaflet where the image of a woman in revealing gym clothes discour- aged the learners from going to the class. In a similar way I did not understand the video of A10’s dad in the same way that A9 did. Digital visual images can then be compared with drawings and contrasted with writing in terms of the affordances they offer. ey also offered one of the most accessible aspects of digital technology for these learners.

Official documents

Helping learners with queries about their own documents was something T1 did generally before and aer lessons and in break times. A18’s leer was an im- mediate information need and something personal to her, she needed help un- derstanding what had gone wrong. T1’s indignation about it then made it into a research object. In the lesson where T1 and I brought in our own documents we made our personal information into language learning objects. is again signals the intimacy of the classroom; T1 said “we don’t mind you seeing but don’t take them home”. e social aspects of these had the most interest; we had conver- sations about children, hospitals, window cleaners and trees. ese documents were clearly formal and not created by participants. ey did not have the same resonance as the more personal: the learners showed lile interest when we read about this lesson in the feedback session.

Some information was too far away from learners’ knowledge and these objects lacked affordances. In particular the discussion about poll cards did not resonate with these learners. However, the learners showed engagement with the task as a whole; they did not want to stop at break time and it was hard to bring the dis- cussion to a close. is task also showed the strategies that they used when their language or literacy prevented them understanding. ey tried to guess using pictures which was sometimes effective and sometimes misleading. e image of a phone on an insurance leer was very difficult to understand while a picture of water on a water bill made it much easier to understand the context. Even with intelligent guesses and collaborative working many of these documents re- mained inaccessible to the learners. is sharing of our documents led to A11’s serendipitous finding of a leaflet that meant she could apply for healthy food vouchers. is was not then the byproduct of social interaction but of language learning.

Stories

One of the most significant ways that information was shared in class A was through stories. Stories were explicitly valued and praised by both the teacher and learners; T1 was keen to tell me about an “amazing story” from A3 and a learner praised the book I wrote for them as “a good story”. During my visits to the class I started to tell more stories and this was encouraged by T1. On one occasion she told the learners “listen, Jess is telling a story”. ese stories crossed

between lesson and break time. Stories were again objects where the practices of language learning and information sharing intersected with social interaction. e learners were learning how to tell stories in English and so this information sharing was also part of modelling language.

Knowledge about British life was conveyed through T1’s stories. Learners also told stories about their lives in the UK and in their home countries. When A3 told me the story about an embarrassing accident she had, I responded by telling her a similar story about myself that made a connection between us as well as possibly sharing information about the expected British way to respond to embarrassing situations. Some stories assumed a particular importance and seemed to have tal- ismanic qualities. I heard a story about a learner geing a bus to the wrong town and spending all night walking home several times. A3’s story about a medici- nal drink also reoccurred. Stories then transmied values and understandings, the intangible as well as the tangible. Storytelling could also be seen as identity forming; connected to being or becoming part of a group. When A16 told the joke about chickens I was the outsider who needed the story explained.

Food

Different kinds of food were one of the most commonly recurring informative objects in this classroom. As with stories, food bridged break and lesson time. Learners cooked and then wrote a recipe for yoghurt curry as a language task, they showed pictures of food on phones, we talked about the food on menus, we ate food on trips and people brought food to share in the class. A significant break time activity was learners explaining to me, T1 or V3 about how to make a particular food. Many of the learners were authorities in discussions of food; when we talked about food in the museum cafe they had far more knowledge of baking than me. During the lesson where we discussed the city farm menu, T1 and I were authorities in conversation about tea cakes and marmite but this switched at the break time when A2 took out a small packets of herbs to make tea and explained the process to me.

Food was also emotional and pleasurable. e sharing of food was like the shar- ing information in that both built personal relationships. In one break time, T1 said the class was turning into a tea party as learners brought out an elaborate array of food they had made. ere was an important relationship between infor- mation about food, and information about culture. Discussions of food generated

new vocabulary but also a way into both British life and to the learners’ home countries. e discussion about Ramadan identified food as part of cultural and religious practice; you should eat three dates to break your fast, and as source of pleasure; A13 expressing her liking for samosas and kebabs. At CVI food became a different kind of object again, a way of learning about health. V4 had brought examples of food that were good for eye health and passed them round the class. T1 was slightly rueful in talking about how oen food forms part of her lessons but it was evident here food had many and varied affordances for this class.

Drawings

Drawing pictures formed a significant part of two lessons I observed. ese were informal objects as they were created by the learners but formal in that they were part of class teaching. In the lesson where we discussed Eid and Ramadan, the pictures were the stimulus for language learning and information sharing. ey were used as the basis for discussion and reflection so their importance was as scaffolding objects. However as with stories they were also a source of pleasure and laughter; A2 laughed about her drawing of her husband and took a photograph so she could show it to him at home. Within this class, the learners’ limited literacy meant that wrien objects had limited affordances and so visual objects became more significant.

Animals

e animals at the farm were one of the few instances of informative objects that were not artefacts. e photographs from the farm taken by the learners were nearly all of animals demonstrating how they were the focus of our aention. Many learners were confident and affectionate with the animals particularly the goats and chickens. Several talked about their own experiences of taking care of animals in their home countries and had authoritative information. ere was a difference between those animals they associated with home and those that were unfamiliar; the Yemeni women did not recognise ducks but were happy to see chickens. It was the emotional affordances; A14 watching the small birds, laugh- ing about the angry chicken, my own liking for the horse as it reminded me of my childhood, that were significant here rather than the information about the animals given on the notices. e photographs of animals discussed in the class- room became more focused on language learning with T1 eliciting information about animals’ appearance but the affective aspects still retained significance.

e importance of enjoyment and pleasure in information sharing was again ev- ident here. e animals were again linked in the practices of language learning and information sharing.

Dictionaries

T1 introduced dictionaries when the learners moved up a language level. ere was then a direct relationship between the presence of particular informative objects in arrangements and the practice of language learning. As with other wrien objects, literacy was the most significant factor in how learners inter- acted with dictionaries. e two learners who were literate in Arabic could use the physical dictionaries most competently and they were also the only ones in that class who used smartphone apps such as Google Translate. Again we can see here that digital objects do not have a separate status; digital capabilities were bound up with other capabilities. Other learners who had smartphones and used them competently for photographs, videos and keeping in touch with home needed support for both physical and online dictionaries.