Recognising learning in the foreign language classroom: multimodality, technology and policy

This session explores learning in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in Uruguay following the implementation of an educational policy designed on the model of one laptop per child.

Dr Germán Canale will be presenting data and findings from his ethnographic study in the EFL classroom and discusses how teachers and students construct EFL as subject.

Adopting a multimodal social semiotic approach Dr German Canale discusses how teachers and students redistribute their semiotic work across the printed EFL textbook and the laptop, with teachers seeking alternative ways for evaluating the students' multimodal production.

The implementation of such an educational policy involving new technological resources has enabled a shift in our views of learning away from understanding language as the only legitimate resource for communicating and demonstrating learning. Dr Canale argues that a view of learning demonstrated through various semiotic modes expands what we recognize as learning in the EFL classroom.

About the speaker

Dr Germán Canale is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociolinguistics and the Department of Languages and Media at the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. He is an EFL instructor and holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition from Carnegie Mellon University (US). His research interests involve multimodal and social semiotic approaches to learning, educational media and language learning policies.

Registration

The Visual and Multimodal Research Forum is a platform for academic discussion on multimodality which is free and open to all postgraduate research students and other researchers from both UCL and other universities.

Links

• Centre for Multimodal Research
• Department for Culture, Communication and Media

Contact 

Sophia Diamantopoulou

Image

• Credit: Dr Germán Canale