Site of engagement, modal density, and frozen actions in language teaching via videoconferencing

Résumé En

The number of online language lessons taking place is growing exponentially and increasingly targeting enhanced collaboration and interactivity. Interaction among the learners and teachers are shaped via diverse forms (synchronous or asynchronous) and modes of communication (e.g. spoken language, gaze, gestures, print), particularly via webcam-mediated platforms. Research in this area has largely focused on teaching competencies (Hampel & Stickler, 2012) and multimodal exploration of such contexts has been limited. Earlier studies have analysed online teachers’ semio-pedagogical competence (Develotte, Vincent & Guichon, 2010), the way in which a single resource is employed (e.g. gaze, gestures, Wigham, 2017) or largely explored the social or interactive aspects of language learning (Cappellini & Azaoui, 2017, Satar, 2016). Our paper draws on Norris’ (2004) methodological framework for analysing multimodal interaction.The site of engagement for the study is a webcam-mediated language learning lesson conducted by an experienced online language teacher with two learners of English via Skype. Using screen-recorded data, we will firstly describe the site of engagement to demonstrate the range of higher-level actions that co-occur (incl. those of a research project, an online lesson, a language-learning convergent task and task instruction-giving).Secondly, we will examine the role of the print mode and demonstrate how the teacher’s modal density varies when an electronic material object (Google docs) is utilised during the higher-level action of instruction-giving. This will allow us to discuss ‘frozen actions’ and apply this unit of analysis to both the disembodied and embodied print mode.This presentation will offer a unique multimodal perspective for the analysis of the online webcam-mediated language lessons using Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis and offer insights for training language teachers to harness the potential of videoconferencing environments.