A Multimodal Approach in the Classroom for Creative Learning and Teaching
Vol.5,No.1(2015)
A multimodal approach in the classroom can be a source of creativity for both teachers and students. It draws upon available visual, audio, and kinaesthetic modes and does not necessarily rely on technology. This paper will briefly define what modes are and outline the origins of multimodal studies in the New London Group (1996). Through a multimodal lesson using video, we can identify modes and how these correlate not only to contemporary society but to specific cognitive processes. This combination allows for creativity and flexibility in teacher-student interaction and can enhance the learning environment.
This paper considers the work of Kress and Jewitt and their research in multimodal studies, and applies these concepts to higher education and the undergraduate experience in second language learning. It focuses on the combination of text, audio and image as individual modes and how these can be creatively combined to produce meaning, encourage interaction and learning in the classroom. Engaging students in course content requires strategies of communication that a) focus and maintain attention, and b) work past the simple cognitive styles of information recognition to activate deeper forms of memory creation. Multimodal approaches tend to do this naturally and as the research results demonstrate, the students responded favourably to multimodal input. The majority of students preferred visual stimulus or a combination of visual and text stimuli for acquiring new lexis and for enhancing oral production.
multimodality; communication; language learning; cognitive interaction
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