UNPACKING TEXTS by Scott Thornbury

Some time ago (by recommendation of a professor) I encountered a webinar by Scott Thornbury about how to approach a text in a class of second or foreign language. Here, I leave a video where he explains briefly what the strategy of "unpacking texts" is about. I am not sure, but I think he has written about this, as well. (I will update this post with the article or book titles if I find them).

This strategy centers the students as active readers of texts and, as Thornbury puts it, treats texts as complex layered constructions. It could be said, that the idea of this strategy is to "deconstruct" a text in order to learn another language and at the same time work with metalinguistics for a deeper understanding of how texts are constructed and interpreted.

The things I would like to highlight about this process are the concepts and perspectives that are behind it, these are the following:

1. Language as discourse: The analysis that makes this process understand texts not only from a linguistics point of view but rather it remarks that, though grammar is part of it, language is not isolated and works within a set of social and cultural factors that come into play and that we, as readers, take into account for its understanding.

2. Texts are created and understood in real, complex contexts: This I find very important as for what I have experienced as a teacher of English as a foreign language, most of the texts that are used for instruction tend to be quite artificial (as the ones given in textbooks) and thought mainly for the purpose of showing "correct" grammar sometimes avoiding many elements present in real life texts, for example; dates and authors in news articles, emojis in digital texts, etc.

3. Students as active receivers of a discourse: This aspect is very important as it leaps from the traditional "reading comprehension" exercises, where there are some (very) specific "open questions", true or false or matching activities, but encourages students to comment and to construct their interpretation "peeling" the texts, layer by layer.

4. Students as agents of their own learning: By analyzing texts in this way, the students take their previous knowledge and collaboratively (along with the teacher) build their knowledge about the language they are learning.

"PEELING THE ONION" How does "unpacking texts" connect to multimodality?

This connects to the multimodal approach in which:

1. Goes beyond the "structures" of grammar: The approach of multiliteracies targets its purpose in changing the (limited) idea of traditional literacy that focuses on the linguistic structure and written language. This said the idea of "peeling" the text can be connected to other elements building the designs being graphic, sound, space, and so on.

2. Involves a reflective process about the elements in the texts.

3. Understands that written language is more than the representation of phonics: What Thornbury proposes is to analyze the elements giving meaning to the texts (in the case of multiliteracies, designs) and not precisely as a pure representation of verbal language.

References: 

McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (1994). Language as discourse: Perspectives for language teaching. London: Longman.