A young child's intergenerational practices through the use of visual screen-based multimodal communication to acquire Qur'anic literacy

This paper is derived from a wider small-scale study of digital literacy practice that explores the ways in which a multilingual seven-year-old child, Bablu, interacts with his grandmother during Internet activities connected to Qur'anic literacy. The study aims to reveal how intergenerational learning support was given to Bablu by his grandmother. The paper draws attention to how digital technology and the medium of the Internet contribute to children's literacy learning, and the family's contribution to children's literacy acquisition connected to intergenerational practices. Video recording was the main method of collecting data together with ethnographic observation. The video was analysed as visual screen-based multimodal communication that reveals the exchange of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. The study provides further exemplification of the term ‘syncretic’ literacy practices from within multilingual families. In this case, Bablu's intergenerational literacy practices in a multicultural setting were seen as trans-languaging, both syncretic and hybrid. This trans-languaging practice reveals how Bablu uses his bilingual skills in order to construct new hybrid sentences for the purpose of accommodating communication with his grandmother who has very limited ability in the use of English.