From everyday objects to Islamic adab: Teacher-guided semiotic mapping in a young-learner EFL classroom
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33474/j-reall.v7i2.25703Keywords:
everyday realia, Islamic adab, material meaning making, semiotic mapping, teacher scaffoldingAbstract
Ordinary classroom objects are often used to make English words concrete, but less is known about how teachers connect those objects with locally meaningful moral practices. This qualitative single case study investigated teacher-guided semiotic mapping in a third-grade EFL classroom at an Islamic elementary school in Sidoarjo, Indonesia. The case involved one teacher and twenty-five students observed across six lessons; five focal students and the teacher also participated in short interviews. Thematic analysis traced how objects, English labels, familiar actions, and Islamic adab were linked and classified students’ responses according to who introduced or extended the meaning. The findings show a recurring three-move process: establishing an object-word relation, grounding the word in an everyday action, and framing that action through adab-related teacher discourse. Students named objects and described familiar functions, but the moral interpretations were usually teacher-initiated or teacher-prompted. Some students produced short bilingual extensions within the teacher’s frame, whereas no clear episode demonstrated a fully independent learner-generated object-adab connection. The study contributes a process-based explanation of how ordinary realia becomes culturally and religiously situated through classroom interaction. Pedagogically, it suggests that values integration should begin with plausible object functions and gradually move from teacher explanation toward open prompts that give young learners greater interpretive space. The findings concern meaning-making processes rather than measured vocabulary gain or independent moral development.
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