Multimodality and Digital Narrative in Teaching a Foreign Language

Abstract

The article focuses on the authors’ pedagogical experience of exploiting digital narratives in a foreign language education at a modern university (on the basis of National Technical University of Ukraine “KPI” named after Igor Sikorsky). The study aims to consider multimodality in terms of foreign language didactics. It was designed by the constructivism theory and narratology in terms of teaching a foreign language. The research exploited the set of theoretical methods: analyzing, summarizing, and interpreting scholarly sources on the issue under scrutiny; generalization and conceptualization of the authors’ pedagogical experience. Applying those methods in coherence logic enabled the effective study and interpretation of the concepts of “narrative” and “digital narrative” in their interrelations. In the study, the narrative is viewed as a sociocultural tool that provides students with deeper self-understanding, and complements the communicative system of foreign language acquisition with metacognition and values of life meaning. The digital narrative as a form of expression, empowered and determined by digital technologies incorporates multimodal communication and narrative as a cognitive unity. The authors have stated that multimodality, grounded on information technologies, is introducing entirely new semiotic resources into the communicative environment of foreign language learning. It is also generating innovative ways and forms of oral and written interaction. Multimodal learning activities illustrating the specifics of creating digital narratives by learners of English as a foreign language, are highlighted. The significance of the study lies in the fact that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is unquestionably a rather fertile condition for active implementing digital technologies into foreign language education, and developing different multimodal learning activities in this area