From Family Homes to Dangerous Hikes: Developing Intercultural Awareness through the Graphic Novel

With the objective of facilitating beginning-level second language (L2) students’ development of intercultural awareness through the reading of a graphic novel from a pedagogy of multiliteracies perspective, the present study applies participatory action-research methodology to a university-level A2 Spanish class ( Council of Europe, 2001 ) by designing and implementing a pedagogical intervention based on the graphic novel La casa by Paco Roca (2015 ). By structuring class activities according to the knowledge processes of the pedagogy for multiliteracies, a graphic novel can be made accessible to beginning L2 learners. It then can be used as a tool for the development of intercultural awareness, broadening conceptualizations of culture beyond simply nations to consider one’s relationship with their environment as they move through different social contexts. This paper shares select pedagogical activities implemented and analyzes the results of a case study to conclude that structuring the reading through the pedagogy of multiliteracies can serve to develop intercultural awareness. Results show that the student participant explores their relationship with their surroundings in multiple social contexts and reflects on the perspective of another person in a moment of conflict, mirroring a scene in the text.