Analysis of Image-Text Relations Jessie Mifsud – S missmifsud.weebly.com

Section 1: Multi-Modal Texts During the course of a typical school day in my Year 1 classroom, we use the following Multi- Modal Texts: Guided reading books, picture books, big books, online big books and stories read aloud on YouTube. The texts being used in this section are: Keys to the Castle - This is an online big book but I have also used it as a guided reader (set of 6) during rotations and subsequently given out comprehension questions to the children to answer after. Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge - I have this book in my classroom but have also shown the students multiple versions of this online. Here is one example: Koala Lou – Again I have this book in my classroom but I have also shown the students multiple versions of it online.

Keys to the Castle Image Text

This is a representational narrative. The contact/gaze in this picture is being offered. The king is not looking at the reader, he is looking at the tower. Not only are his eyes looking that way but he is also pointing in that direction. The king here is the salient image and the vector is directing the reader’s eyes to the tower. This is an intimate/personal close up shot, making the reader feel like they are actually there with the king. He is facing front-on and so the reader feels wholly involved in the story. The attitude is determined by the angle of vision. Here it is equal and therefore the power between participant and viewer is equal. The colours used are warm, vibrant and familiar which creates the humorous tone that the book is all about. Finally the modality of this text can be described as low. There is nothing realistic about this text.

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge This image is an image that appears towards the end of the picture book. I have read this aloud to students, as well as playing it on the smartboard with someone else reading aloud.

This is a representational narrative. The contact/gaze in this picture is being offered. Wilfrid is not looking at the reader, he is looking at Nancy. Nancy however is looking at the items in the basket. So in this way the reader looks at Wilfrid who directs us to Nancy who directs us to the items in the basket. Wilfrid and Nancy here are the salient image and the vector is directing the reader’s eyes to the basket. Compared to the King in Keys to the Castle this shot is a medium shot. Whilst this does create a sense of social interaction, it has been done to focus on the relationship between Wilfrid and Nancy and not between Wilfrid and the viewer. However the angle of vision is equal therefore the power between participant and viewer is equal. The colours used are warm, vibrant and familiar which creates the gentle tone that the book is all about. Finally the modality of this text can be described as medium to high. The illustrations could be described by some children as realistic.

Koala Lou This image is an image that appears at the end of the picture book. I have read this aloud to students, as well as playing it on the smartboard with someone else reading aloud.

This is a representational narrative. The contact/gaze in this picture is being offered. Koala Lou and her mother are not looking at the reader. Koala Lou is looking up at her mother. Together they are the salient image and the vector directs you back to Koala Lou’s mother. This is an intimate/personal close up shot, making the reader feel like they are actually there with Koala Lou. Together they are facing front- on and so the reader feels wholly involved in the story. The attitude here it is equal and therefore the power between participant and viewer is equal. The colours used are warm, vibrant and familiar which creates the warm tone that the book is all about. Finally the modality of this text can be described as low. Whilst the illustrations look realistic, not much else of what happens in the book is.

Section 2: Deep Analysis

I have chosen Keys to the Castle to use for this section of the assignment. This two page spread is drawing on “two systems of meaning to create the particular instances depicted in the text” (Unsworth, 2013). Using Martinec and Salway’s (2005) descriptions of relative status between image and language segments this section’s image and language segments can be described as equal and complementary. They are equal because one does not overpower the other, nor is the image more important than the text and vice versa. Their relationship is complementary as the image shows what the text has said. Unsworth (2013) describes this as elaboration which is basic image- language interaction as, “no new ideational element is introduced by the text or image” (p. 31). The subtype that the text corresponds to is equivalence because the, “ideational content corresponds across modes and so there is redundancy of meaning” (p. 31).

This is true of this section as the image is not needed for the reader to construct meaning from the text. It is not actually necessary to consider the image at all. Furthermore, in my experience with reading this text to students and covering up the text most students were able to deduce from the image that the King would stack the boxes to get to the tower. Elaboration – equivalence is the least difficult tier of intermodal interpretive strategies and thus well suited for year 1.

Section 3: Teaching Implications “Images have become increasingly prominent in the vast majority of texts read by students” (Unsworth, 2013). Images in texts have become a crucial component of teaching children how to read text and this is especially true in the early years such as Kindergarten and Year 1. The lowest level guided readers which are read at school and taken home by students are repetitions of high frequency and sight words usually having only one word replaced each sentence. For example, This is a hat, this is a dog, this is a tree. On each subsequent page the image also changes, students are taught to look at the image if they do not know the word or cannot sound it out. Here it can be seen that even in the very early years students rely heavily on images in multimodal texts.

“It is now inadequate to consider reading simply as processing information in print”. (Unsworth, 2013). For many emergent readers, images are the key to unlocking new words and learning letter-sound correspondence. Most classrooms have alphabet charts where each letter has an image beginning with that letter. In the case of Keys to the Castle, by looking at the image learners, can predict what the King’s next actions will be. That example of text shows elaboration – equivalence combination which shows lower order thinking skills however by looking at elaboration – exposition, extension – distribution and finally extension – augmentation image/text relationships, as a teacher you can extend your students when it comes to comprehension. An implication of this is that you can cater to all your students abilities while still teaching them the importance of image/text relationships.

Bibliography Fox, M. (1988). Koala Lou. SA: Omnibus Books. Fox, M. (1984). Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. SA: Omnibus Books. Thomas, A. How Images Construct Meaning (Lecture). Thompson, L. (2007). Keys to the Castle. VIC: Blake Publishing. Unsworth, L. (2014). Multimodal reading comprehension: curriculum expectations and large-scale literacy testing practices. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 9(1), DOI: / X