Theresa Summer (Würzburg): Multimodal teenagers' literature: potentials for the EFL classroom and students' perceptions

Dr. Theresa Summer is a lecturer for TEFL at the Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg and a secondary school teacher for English and Music. She is a co-editor of the journal Englisch 5-10 (Friedrich Verlag), editor of a variety of TEFL papers and books, and develops teaching materials. She completed her PhD in 2010 focusing on grammar instruction in EFL textbooks. Her main research interest currently lies in the field of EFL education through pop culture with a focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Reading authentic texts in the classroom requires a careful selection of texts especially for early secondary school teaching. When selecting suitable texts, Theresa Summer focuses on the educational value and motivational potentials of multimodal literature including picturebooks, graphic novels, and comic-strip novels. One of her projects involved reading James Patterson’s multimodal novel Middle School: Ultimate Showdown in grade 6. In addition to creating practical competence-focused tasks to integrate this book in practice, she analysed students’ perceptions of reading the book and dealing with it in class. The goal was to find ways in which learners can be motivated to devote more time to reading so as to develop a range of competences.