Creating Multimodal Texts for Language Learning Purposes

Background

The idea of using various senses for learning and teaching appeared in Comenius’ Didactica Magna in 1657. Since then it has been discussed and applied in many pedagogical approaches. Recently two terms have emerged that is multimodal and multisensory teaching and learning. Both approaches refer to using more than one sense to enhance learning. In teaching languages usually the senses of sight and hearing (vision and auditory) are mainly used. However, other senses such as touch (tactile), smell (olfactory), taste (gustation), and movement (kinetic) can be also used. In this chapter multimodality related to two senses will be exploited that is sight and hearing as means of language acquisition with the use of home-made video materials.

On the one hand, the modern concept of multimodality helps to explain the role of texts, images, and spatial resources for the composition of messages (Murray, 2013). Multimodal messages convey meaning which is accessible to various recipients as mass media contribute to unification of the content and its grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Understanding the semiotic structure of the picture is essential for its use as language learning material. This is a shared area of multimodal linguistics research (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Bateman, 2008) and educational research (Kalantzis & Cope, 2002; Bateman, 2008). What is more, multimodal resources represent the social and cultural values of societies (Kress, 2010). Bezemer and Kress (2008) claim that students understand texts in a different way if they are presented not only in alphanumeric format but also accompanied by sound and image. This explains the role of videos as multimodal texts in teaching languages.