Language Learning with Multimodality

Learners in the 21st century have more options for communicating with each other digitally, such as texting, blogging, or through social media. This rise in computer-controlled communication has required classes to become multimodal in order to teach students the skills required in the 21st-century work environment (Vaniti and Towndrow, 2010). These changes have influenced the English language and how it is taught nowadays. For learning English as a foreign or a second language, communication is the main goal. This is closely relevant as learners should employ multiple channels and modes to convey their message in the target language to a wide audience. Therefore, researchers argue that curricula should be updated to incorporate the new digital input and address these changing multiliteracies (Abdullah, 2010). As a result, learning in schools need to be organized around a much wider concept of communicative practice and representation. 

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While we learn languages to communicate, language is not the only primary mode of communication (Early et al 2015). Multimodality as a social practice of making meaning through a variety of semiotic affordances, including the visual, aural, spatial, and gestural, has emerged from the margins to occupy a significant place in language education and research (Darvin, 2015). In the classroom, students are learning through a combination of these modes, including sound, gestures, speech, images and text. For example, in digital components of lessons, there are often pictures, videos, and sound effect as well as the text to help students grasp a better understanding of the subject. Thus, multimodality is characterized as a necessary pedagogical approach to facilitate success for all students in an increasingly technological and global era (Kress, 2003; Selfe, 2004; Ball, 2004).

 

Multimodality also requires that teachers move beyond teaching with just text, as the printed word is only one of many modes students must learn and use (Vaniti and Towndrow, 2010). As a result, it has risen to occupy a legitimate space that has traditionally privileged the role of language in the construction of meaning. According to Darvin (2015) learners communicate through a diversity of ways, therefore, the integration of multimodal practices into the classroom is a recognition of the multiplicity of identities, languages, and cultures of students.