ReCall Special Issue: Multimodal Environments in CALL

Abstract

The pervasive use of technology has changed dramatically how we create meaning and interact with one another. Smartphones, tablets and laptops have equipped us with a plethora of applications that we can use creatively to communicate in ever more effective ways. We can now have a text-based conversation on our devices with photos, web links (possibly to audiovisual media) and even GPS locations. Videoconferencing platforms enable us to combine voice and text chat, share all kinds of files (documents, pictures, audio/ video recordings, whiteboards) and work on them collaboratively. The immersive platforms of virtual worlds integrate written and oral communication tools, which can be complemented with an array of bodily movements that avatars can reproduce in different scenarios while engaging in action. Additionally, in online games, and more specifically in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), gamers interact as avatars with other players in complex ways resorting to different communication modes to solve problems, complete quests, plan strategies and coordinate action to achieve the game goals.The widespread availability and sophistication of multimodal communication tools have captured the imagination of practitioners and scholars alike, who have identified interesting learning opportunities and fields of enquiry for language teaching. Many studies have been carried out in the past three decades looking at the affordances that digital tools have for facilitating meaningful communication among peers and for enhancing second language (L2) learning. However, most of this research has been looking at meaning-making processes in communication from a traditionally linguistic perspective. Only recently have scholars initiated the methodological turn towards looking at communication processes from a multimodal perspective in order to grasp the complexity of all the layers and modes involved in meaning creation.Multimodality, as defined by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001: 20), is "the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined -they may for instance reinforce each other […], fulfil complementary roles […] or [be] hierarchically ordered". In computer assisted language learning (CALL), different semiotic modes are also involved in the meaning-making process -exchanges may take place orally and/or in writing, and may benefit from additional information such as non-verbal cues, graphics or social presence indicators. All of these provide learners with new ways to negotiate meaning in language learning.A growing body of research on multimodality studies is emerging in the field of communication and CALL. Most scholars analyse this concept from a social semiotic perspective (Kress & Jewitt, 2003;Kress, 2010), based on van Leeuwen's socio-semiotic theory (2004), or through a multimodal interactional analysis approach (Norris, 2004), both regarding language use in general (Bednarek & Martin, 2011;Jing, 2011; Kojima, Brown, ...

Virtual Worlds and Second Language Acquisition

“…VWs integrate multiple modes of communication conducive to relevant meaning-making processes in language learning. Synchronous and asynchronous written and oral communication layers can be complemented with non-verbal elements and bodily movements (kinetic and proxemic acts) that customisable avatars can reproduce in multiple scenarios while engaging in action (Calvo et al, 2016;Wigham & Chanier, 2013). All these different layers of meaning-making sources interact in complex ways in VWs enriching communication and learning processes.…”