Transduction and Transformation of Semiotic Resources in an English Classroom

Abstract

The ways a teacher represents meaning have an impact on the knowledge being taught, curriculum being designed, and learning activities and assessment involved. In order to achieve the learning objectives, a teacher is required to use different semiotic resources available. This leads to changes in how modalities are used (transduction) or in how they are structured (transformation). This study describes the processes of transduction and transformation of semiotic resources in an English classroom. The respondent involved was a senior English teacher at a Junior High School in Bandung. A session of her teaching activities was recorded with a video and the results were divided into a number of scenes which described changes or transformation of semiotic resources. The findings show that the semiotic resources that the teacher used include verbal, writing, simple pictures, and body movement (actional mode). Transduction and transformation took place mainly at while-teaching stage. The transduction and transformation process worked together harmoniously to allow the teaching materials to be more comprehensible to the students, to allow teachers to have more control over the class, and to increase students’ involvement in the teaching learning process.