Description
I presented a paper as a part of a Symposium. Below is an extract of the abstract and my presentation.Developments in the areas of computer assisted language learning (CALL), multiliteracies, and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) have had a profound effect on understandings of how people communicate, and how language is used and learned. The role of ‘the visual’, and of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in language classrooms are obvious examples of the centrality of multimodality to language use and language learning. In foreign-language learning contexts, such developments are perhaps of greater significance than in second-language contexts, since access to genuine opportunities to communicate in the target language are more likely to be mediated by some form of technology.
This symposium explores the relations between multimodality, interaction, and mediation in three EFL contexts. The second paper explores a specific interactional tool: Voice Thread, and reports on a project in which it is used for interactive telecollaborative tasks between primary schools in Sri Lanka and Australia. This paper also takes a case study approach to explore features of Voice Thread that have the potential to promote communicative competence in English in Sri Lankan primary schools, and how these features were used in one such collaborative task.
Separately, the papers give an insight into pedagogical practice in three EFL contexts, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and the possibilities for mediated interaction that technology can provide. Collectively, the papers raise issues for the ways in which language learners socialise, communicate, and learn, for the role of technology in education, and for the future of TESOL and of the English language in EFL contexts.
Period | 14 Jul 2014 |
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Event title | 9th University of Sydney TESOL Research Network Colloquium |
Event type | Conference |
Location | Sydney, AustraliaShow on map |
Degree of Recognition | Regional |