Volume 7, Issue 2 -

The ever increasing worldwide use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) over the last decade, has not only contributed to the way people interact with each other, but also to how languages are taught and learnt. Language digital materials such as vodcasts bring together, in an innovative, attractive and motivating manner, diverse modes of communication which promote a multimodal approach of learning. This article explores the use of multimodal ensembles  in audio-visual language learning materials designed to enhance students’ comprehension. This mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) study, comprised a multimodal analysis of two language learning vodcasts from the British Council, using ELAN as the main multimodal annotation tool. The data obtained from the multimodal transcription was relevant to describe the different orchestrations of modes contained in both vodcasts. From this data, two comprehension tests, based on the ensembles found, were developed to check how each ensemble could benefit language students. The results confirmed that EFL students’ audio-visual comprehension improved when there was a greater number of orchestrated modes. These findings not only emphasise the potential of multimodal materials to improve foreign language comprehension, but also encourage teachers to adapt their methods to the pervasive digital era.

This article explores visual narrativity through the case of prospective, or future-tense, narratives realized through visual images. Addressing the challenges of representing narrative elements of temporality, events and experience in a single, static image, it proposes an analytical framework combining social semiotic, contextual and cognitive perspectives. In doing so, it argues that a combined approach enhances our ability to understand the interplay between on the one hand the image-internal visual cues of temporality and modality that activate the viewer’s imagination and narrative inferences, and on the other, the processes by which such inferences are made, including the influence of the viewer’s contextual knowledge and cognitive processes in guiding them. The article uses architectural renderings as material for analysis, because they are exemplary of how visual images invite viewers to imagine the kinds of activities and experiences that can unfold in a future setting and thus make inferences about temporality, event and experience beyond the image’s isolated moment.

Demonstrating a sports technique to students presents coaches and teachers a practical challenge: How to communicate a multi-phased and fleeting movement of the body effectively and in a manner which also makes clear the temporal relation of the individual phases of the movement? By using video-based methods and video recordings collected in budo sports training, this paper illustrates how teachers parse a complicated and fast-paced technique into individual steps by resorting to talk and embodied means. Furthermore, we examine how the teachers can move back and forth between these steps with an interactional practice we call ‘return-practice’. By employing this practice, the teachers provide additional information regarding particular steps, highlight the simultaneous nature of particular body movements, demonstrate alternative ways of performing the technique, and illustrate the consequences of the incorrect performance of these steps. The linguistic design of the ‘return-practice’ is shown to differ in the above four functions.