Twenty-first century learners live in a highly visual world, being constantly surrounded by visual, technologized stimuli and the educational system, be it general or specialized—as in the case of higher education—needs to creatively meet and answer these learning requirements. Among the plethora of new or updated approaches, the concept of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) designed by Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen has gained extensive popularity due to its capacity of being adapted to a wide range of specialized fields with notable improvement results. The main purpose of the present review is to synthetically and critically present relevant scientific work related to the application of the VTS procedure and to further identify possible study areas that would highly benefit from the insertion of this procedure. Thus, the theoretical perspective is tackled from a cognitive-psychology standpoint, followed by a rendering of the research variety in applied VTS contexts pertaining to different study domains, as well as online VTS web clustering. These contexts have shown a predilection for VTS usage, which improves higher-education students’ specialized vocabulary and speaking skills in the same target language, but not in the case of ESP (English for specific purposes) classes.
The current study intended to analyse the perception of foreign language higher education instructors and higher education students in Romania regarding the increase of their digital skills and the use of digital tools in the COVID-19 pandemic. Online instruction provided a multitude of challenges and opportunities for designing instructional content. Our respondents concluded that language learning games and gamified instruction represent valuable tools in reconfiguring the scenario within language classes. By exploring these opportunities that increase students’ participation, interactivity and accessibility, the teaching and learning experience can be improved and adapted to more complex and ever-changing technological advances.
This paper aims at providing an insight into the online/hybrid foreign language teaching and learning system in Romania. Drawing on the theoretical body of research of metacognitive and politeness representations within the field, the study further offers an analysis of how metacognition and politeness strategies are perceived by the main stakeholders of academic education (language learners and instructors). The focus is on describing specific aspects where the support metacognitive and politeness strategies enable a more responsible and engaging digital pedagogical framework that empowers learner autonomy and engagement. Emphasis is placed on highlighting context-ridden challenges observed in online/hybrid learning/teaching connected to various degrees of preparedness to deal with the dynamic frontal/online teaching shift and also on suggesting student-centred solutions. The obtained results of the study may inform subsequent developments of language mediation through the activation of digital cognition and social and emotional learning practices.
"Mapping Language Learning with Emojis: From Phatic Communication to Idioms and Flash Fiction. By roaming around digital resources in search of a customised learning approach, language learners often identify as netizens accustomed to a coded Internet language which is rarely juxtaposed with the language taught in the ESP classroom. To keep pace with shifting trends in online communication, teachers often need to expand the discursive membership by empowering learners to turn from users into content creators. By referring to the potential of using emojis in the framework of speech acts, the current paper aims to indicate directions of embedding emojis as social marking tokens and instruments of developing language and digital literacy skills in the foreign language class. The process of embedding emojis in language teaching stems from the integration of emoji as markers in the teaching of phatic communication, to reinforce the locutionary and illocutionary act of speech. Moreover, emojis can be used as an extension of teaching idioms, whereas the illocutionary and perlocutionary function of emoji is explored in interactive vocabulary practice tasks or within gamified sequences. Eventually, using emojis as perlocutionary acts in language learning is applied to storytelling as a mechanism of developing a multiliterate discourse, by means of which learners are introduced to writing emoji stories and flash fictions and then to translating them into words. Keywords: emojis, content creators, speech acts, multimodality, participatory culture "
Discourse multimodality and the impact of new technology on teaching resources in the framework of digital education have called for more customised learning experiences. ESP (English for Specific Purposes) learners are facing such a transition with a stringent need to access educational resources that allow for meaningful and authentic contexts of interaction, be them synchronous or asynchronous. To cater for these learning needs, ESP instructors must also become innovative content creators, among other roles such as multicultural instructor, growth mindset promoter or professional communicator. Projecting these dynamic educational scenarios, the ESP teacher can facilitate and enhance communicative language learning by juxtaposing collaborative (specifically gamified learning experiences) and task-based approaches. In building customised communicative learning frameworks for ESP learners, educators empower them to expand their language learning horizons by using communication as the vital instrument. It is the purpose of this contribution to examine how task-based language learning can be paired with digital pedagogy to create sustainable learning resources, stemming from emoji-encrypted language chunks to deciphering emoji-based idioms. Likewise, the study aims to explore the potential of using these resources to foster storytelling as a communicative language learning approach and to analyse the efficiency of using this practice with Preschool and Primary School Pedagogy undergraduate students throughout the ESL classes and enabling learners to share their learning experience for peer assessment.
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