This presentation explores the notion of affective literacy and relates it to TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language). At the heart of affective literacy is 'affect' and how we work with it. Affect is a multi-dimensional concept that has the potential to transform teaching and learning practice. Educators can engage with affect as a means to enhance their affective workings in the classroom and beyond.

1. AFFECTIVE LITERACY AND
TEFL
DAVID R. COLE
WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY

2. WHAT IS AN AFFECT?
• Affect is the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is a key part of the process of an organism's
interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display, which is "a facial, vocal, or
gestural behaviour that serves as an indicator of affect” …

3. WHAT IS AFFECTIVE LITERACY?
A broad range of somatic, emotive responses to reading a text. Affective literacy seeks out the life-principle, messy and complex,
threading through reading activities and gestures toward bodily economies of reading and transacting texts …
Amsler (2004, p. 2).

4. AFFECTIVE AND MULTIPLE LITERACIES (COLE, 2009)
How does affective literacy
relate to other literacies?
How can affective literacy be
realized as a practice?
What are the principles of
affective literacy?
What is the pedagogy of
affective literacy?

5. HOW IS AFFECTIVE LITERACY CONNECTED TO TEFL?
• The expansion of texts that can be used in TEFL (though multimodality/globalisation, etc.) creates
greater doubt for the teacher
• All texts must be affective to create engagement
• How can the TEFL teacher create affective engagement?
• What are the different aspects of affectivity?
• Can affect be measured?
• How does affect relate to/complement cognition?
• What texts are affective and why?

6. AFFECTIVE DOMAIN FROM BLOOM
How does the affective
domain relate to your
TEFL practice?
Can you discern the
affective domain in your
TEFL practice?
How can the affective
domain be
enhanced/manipulated?

7. 3-LEVEL MODEL OF AFFECTIVE EDUCATION
• Reaction/cure: Doing something after the problem has arisen, e.g. offering counselling to pupils who
have had problems, referring pupils with problems to social services or other outside agency,
supporting a child who has been bereaved, discussing and mediating after a fight.
• Proaction/prevention: Doing something before the event by preparing people to cope with anticipated
situations, e.g. assertiveness training; drugs and Aids programmes, discussing the issue of death and
loss with the class, perhaps in relation to the death of pets.
• Enhancement: Positive encouragement of development, not primarily driven by the desirability of
prevention, but by the aim of developing the whole person, e.g. role play, interpersonal skills, work
decision making opportunities in class, working on self esteem, offering praise and encouragement.
• Lang, Katz & Menezes (1998, p.13).

8. AFFECTIVE PRACTICE
• Invite collaborative, self-reflective analysis of emotions and critical analysis of cultural, gendered
differences in emotions and how the rules of emotional conduct maintain social hierarchies.
• Provide students with an opportunity to examine emotional experience within a context not usually
provided in schools or elsewhere.
• Allow teachers to explore their own emotional experience and develop conscientious philosophies of
emotion to inform their pedagogies and interaction.
• Allow young people to articulate and possibly develop an increased vocabulary, so that they can
creatively examine their ethical relations with others and choose for themselves modes of integrating
emotions in their lives.
• (Boler, 1999, p.81).

9. THE ARRIVAL
How does this picture make you feel?
What language can you use to describe it?
How could you relate to this picture?
What is the sensation of this picture?

10. THE ARRIVAL (II)
How does this picture make you feel?
What language can you use to describe it?
How could you relate to this picture?
What is the sensation of this picture?

11. HOW ARE IMAGES RELATED TO AFFECT?
Find 10 images
Describe the related affect for each image
How do the images make you feel?
How are images, affects and language
connected?
Does everyone have the same response?

12. POLITICAL AFFECT
How does this picture make you feel?
What is the message?
Where is this picture located?
How could you use this picture for your
TEFL class?
Can you think of Taiwanese example s of
this type of art (graffiti)?

13. POLITICAL AFFECT (II)
How does this picture make you feel?
What is the message?
Where is this picture located?
How could you use this picture for your
TEFL class?
Can you think of Taiwanese example s of
this type of art (graffiti)?

14. AFFECT AND STORYTELLING
What makes for a good story?
How can we teach our students to
be good story tellers?
What do you feel when listening to
a good story?
Are there rules for storytelling?
How does storytelling and TEFL
relate to one another?
Are there inter-cultural elements to
storytelling?

15. FIGURES OF SPEECH
How do different figures of speech
make you feel?
What is the affect of these figures of
speech?
Write out one textual example for
each figure of speech
How doe you teach figures of speech
in your TEFL practice?

16. HUMOUR
Does this cartoon make you laugh?
Why is it funny?
How does humour make you feel?
What are the affects of humour?
Are you a funny teacher?
Can you become closer to your class
through humour?
What does humour depend on?
Is there inter-cultural humour. How
specific/dispersed is it? When should
you use humour?

17. CARTOONS
What cartoons can you use for your TEFL classrooms?
How do they create affects?
How do cartoons make you feel?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of using cartoons?
What other types of cartoons are there, e.g. Manga …
Find 5 cartoons for your TEFL classroom/decide how you will use
them. Describe the affects.

18. AFFECTIVE PEDAGOGY
How do you know when your
pedagogy is affective?
How does affect relate to
inclusion/differentiation/assessment?
How affective is the curriculum?
How can you become more affective as
a TEFL teacher?
What are the most important aspects
of affective practice?

19. FURTHER READING
• Amsler, M. (2004). Affective literacy: Gestures of reading in the later Middle Ages. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
retrieved November 8, 2005, from: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ essays_in_medieval_studies/v018/18.1amsler.html
• Boler, M. (1999). Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. New York: Routledge.
• Cole, D.R. (2009). Deleuzian Affective Literacy for Teaching Literature: A Literary Perspective on Multiple Literacies Theory. In
D. Masny & D.R. Cole (Eds.), Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective (pp. 63-79. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
• Cole, D.R. (2008). Explorations of affective literacy amongst middle school English teachers. Literacy Learning: The Middle
Years, 16 (3) 44-56.
• Cole, D.R. (2011). The actions of affect in Deleuze - Others using language and the language that we make … Educational
Philosophy and Theory. Volume 43, Issue 6, August 549-561.
• Cole, D.R. (2009). The power of emotional factors in English teaching. Power and Education. 1 (1) 57-70
• Cole, D.R., & Yang, GY. (2008). Affective literacy for TESOL teachers in China. Prospect, Volume 23, Number 1, 37-45
• Lang, P., Katz, Y., & Menezes I. (1998). Affective education. A comparative view. London and New York: Cassell.