Media Literacy Education for Young Learners of English in the Philippines

Young learners in this interconnected and technology-driven world need skills to both interpret and create media messages. These skills will allow them to use English in global contexts through authentic, multimodal communication. This chapter explores ways to develop English language teaching (ELT) materials that cultivate media literacy in young learners of English. It presents practical and creative ideas for utilizing media literacy activities as content for English language learning in diverse contexts around the world. Teachers will be inspired to bring new kinds of media into the classroom that reflect their students’ lives and interests and motivate them to learn English. The chapter provides strategies for creating and curating media for teaching English to young learners (TEYL) while supporting teachers’ ability to design lessons around those multimedia materials. These strategies are based on frameworks from the fields of media literacy education and ELT. They include Content and Language Integrated Instruction and media analysis tools that promote the thoughtful and ethical use and creation of media. Educators will learn how to foster real multimodal communication in English while building students’ critical thinking and analysis skills. This will put young learners on a path to becoming engaged global citizens through their use of English as an international language in our media saturated world.