Technology and language learning: A multimodal perspective

In an already highly digitalised world, the Covid-19 pandemic has further amplified the need for computer-mediated communication. In turn, this has increased the need for those working with English as the Lingua Franca in professional or education settings to add to their communicative repertoire, beyond the mere linguistic knowledge. It is within this context that the idea of multimodal literacy has come to play an even more dominant role. Multimodal literacy can be defined as the ability to communicate using two or more modes of meaning; examples of modes are writing, speech, gestures, images, music and sound to name a few. It is easy to see how virtually all communication (digital or not) is multimodal in nature. The keynote will introduce some key concepts in multimodal research and discuss the advantages and challenges that a multimodal perspective can bring to the EFL classroom, whether in digital or physical contexts.