Enhancing Series_Serials Literacy and Multilingual Competencies: Jane the Virgin in the EFL Classroom

This chapter analyses the potential of the series Jane the Virgin (2014-2019) for the EFL classroom. This US comedy-drama, created by Jennie Snyder Urman, is loosely based on Juana la Virgen (2002), a popular Venezuelan telenovela. Set in Miami, this remake follows three generations of women: Jane Villanueva, a young, hard-working VenezuelanAmerican who is accidentally artificially inseminated; her single mother, Xiomara; and Alba, her religious grandmother, who is a first-generation immigrant and speaks mainly in Spanish. With mostly a Latino cast, this romantic-drama adaptation follows the conventions and themes of the telenovela genre while, at the same time, deconstructing some of the tropes associated with the telenovela paradigm. This chapter explores the possibilities offered by the bilingual and multicultural nature of this ‘millennial telenovela’ in the EFL classroom (secondary education, 13+ age, level B1-B2). The first part of the chapter looks at the characteristics of this fast-paced modern telenovela produced for the growing Hispanic millennial audience in the US: the complexity of themes, characters and mix of drama and comedy. The second section explores the notion of multilingualism in screen media and how its representation matters in our current superdiverse society. This type of television series can provide a good illustration of the language ideology and multilingual practices in the country of production and beyond, given the shifting contexts of audio-visual media spectatorship due to the growth of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The bilingual show provides a wealth of examples of multimodal communication, as well as opportunities for cultural learning due to the social nature of some of its content. The third part suggests a series of pre-, while and post-viewing activities to develop the students’ series/serials literacy and multilingual competences. This final section also proposes tasks aimed at designing a multimodal product or artefact, individually or collaboratively, to engage with series productively.