Page 23 - Tvorjenje pomena in večrazsežna – večkodna pismenost

Nežka Kuzmin Delgiusto Teaching Verbs to Pupils Aged 10–11 Years Using
Ciril Kosmač Primary School Piran, the Transduction of a Narrative Illustration
Slovenia
nezka.kuzmin@gmail.com
© 2026 Nežka Kuzmin Delgiusto
Meaning-Making, Multiliteracies
and Multimodality
Abstracts of the International
Symposium
Koper, 19–20 March 2026
in a Wordless Picture Book
In their teaching practice, teachers frequently use multimodal texts whose mean-
ings are constructed through more than one semiotic code. Among these texts
are picture books that combine verbal and non-verbal semiotic codes in various
ways. A specific type of picture book is the wordless picture book, which, from the
perspective of visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2007; Starc, 2008), can be
defined as a text composed predominantly of visual code, with verbal code lim-
ited to the title and authorship. Meaning is constructed by readers through iden-
tifying connections between individual illustrations and integrating them into a
coherent narrative through the transformation of meaning from one code to an-
other. Bezemer and Kress (2008, p. 175) define this process as transduction.
This paper examines the didactic potential of using the transduction of narrative
illustration in wordless picture books for teaching verbs as a part of speech. This
is a linguistic topic that often presents difficulties for pupils (Šek Mertük, 2019, p.
11). The study is grounded in the theoretical frameworks of visual grammar.
The research involved 67 fifth-grade pupils who, based on a selected narrative il-
lustration, completed a worksheet containing a table that served as the basis for
the analysis of the collected data. The table was structured into three columns
representing three interrelated tasks. In the first column, the pupils described the
action of an animal in a sentence, in the second column, they extracted from the
written sentence the words (verbs) that express the action, and in the third col-
umn, they explained how the selected action is represented in the illustration,
that is, through which semiotic signs it is expressed.
The research shows that the treatment of verbs using the transduction of narra-
tive illustration in wordless picture books is meaningful and beneficial, as pupils
acquire knowledge about the verb through their own active exploration and
learning.Thisapproachnotonlyguidespupilstorecogniseverbsthroughthepic-
torial code but also fosters the development of their multimodal literacy, which
is crucial due to the nature of contemporary texts.
Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: A social semiotic ac-
count of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25(2), 166–195.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Reading images: The grammar of visual design
(2nd ed.). Routledge.
Starc, S. (2008). Osnovnošolsko učbeniško besedilo kot besedilo kolonija, sestavl-
jeno iz besednih in nebesednih znakov. In V. Medved-Udovič, M. Cotič, & M.
Cencič (Eds.), Sodobne strategije učenja in poučevanja (pp. 45–56). Univerza
na Primorskem, Pedagoška fakulteta.
Šek Mertük, P. (2019). Predlogi učiteljev za obravnavo vsebin v e-okolju. In N.
Ulčnik (Ed.), Slovenščina na dlani 2 (pp. 9–14). Univerzitetna založba Univerze
vMariboru.
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-565-8.20 23