Developing Professional Communication: The Construction of a Multimodal Understanding of Job Interviews

Abstract

This article explores how online videos with a pedagogical focus can possibly make an impact on our current language teaching and learning practices. The affordance of videos to create multimodal content that can be shared with the public allows content creators to use a wide range of resources, such as spoken and written language, gestures, screen layout, etc., to create learning environments that can promote an awareness of a multimodal perspective to the understanding of a particular kind of professional communication context, such as job interviews, as illustrated in this article. By analyzing a series of videos on job interviews using multimodal semiotic analysis, I argue that these videos, which I call pedagogical vlogs, are helpful not only in terms of teaching the language skills required for job interviews, but also to help create a multimodal understanding of job interviews through the strategic orchestration of multiple semiotic modes. The popularity of pedagogical vlogs, as well as their affordance to provide lesson content created by the public, offer new possibilities for language teaching and learning, but it has yet only received scant attention from applied linguistics and language education researchers. This article aims to start a dialog on the pedagogical implications of this new form of learning so as to uncover the potentials offered by pedagogical vlogs in education.

A Multimodal Rhetorical Analysis of Video Resumes

“…The findings of this study can provide several pedagogical implications. Analyzing VRs using multimodal semiotic resources can contribute to the teaching of communication skills in higher education, and help to develop students' multimodal understanding required for producing VRs, due to their strategic orchestration of multiple semiotic modes (Ho, 2019). More specifically, "the creation of authentic materials can increase students' motivation and expose them to real language and cultures as well as to the different genres of the professional community to which they aspire" (García-Ostbye & Martínez-Sáez, 2023: 56).…”

“…My analysis is based on a comprehensive examination of excerpts from VRs with the aim of developing a framework for the multimodal analysis of VRs which will demonstrate how different semiotic resources interact in this genre. In fact, using videos to create multimodal content may allow students to learn to deploy a wide range of multisemiotic resources in the context of ESP, which entails promoting students' awareness of the multimodal perspective in any type of professional communication context (Ho, 2019).…”

Translanguaging in digital learning: the making of translanguaging spaces in online English teaching videos

“…One affordance of the use of online teaching videos is that it can re-create a multimodal understanding of specific contexts. Ho (2019), for instance, qualitatively analysed a series of videos with an objective of teaching language related to job interviews. It is a professional context demanding not only a linguistic performance, but also an embodied performance with the strategic orchestration of gestures, body posture, and attire that is perceived as 'appropriate'.…”

Enhancing multimodal communicative competence in ESP: the case of job interviews

“…The model we propose was designed for a Business English course taught in the degree of Business Administration at our university. It focuses on the genre of the job interview as a key communicative event that students need to learn due to its relevance in their future professional careers (Ho 2019), especially in globalised contexts that require competence in English. As a form of institutional discourse, a job interview involves at least two interlocutors, namely interviewers and the interviewees or candidates (Scheuer 2001), who engage in a series of questions-answers to fulfil particular communicative purposes.…”