Teachers’ voices on multimodal input for second or foreign language learning

Abstract

Multimodal input – which combines written, auditory, and/or visual modalities – is pervasive in everyday life and could serve as a source of rich input in language teaching. In recent years, research has determined that vocabulary learning is one of the clear benefits of being exposed to such input. Regrettably, only a handful of studies have investigated whether and how second language (L2) teachers approach multimodal input in teaching. To further contribute to the research–practice dialogue, we examined factors that influence L2 teachers’ use of multimodal input in L2 teaching. This qualitative case study presents an in-depth analysis of interview data derived from 21 practitioners in various L2 teaching contexts globally. Following three rounds of data analysis, 24 factors were identified and are presented in four themes. The results indicate that teachers: (1) paid close attention to their students’ needs and goals; (2) drew on their own learning and teaching experiences and training supported by research-based practices; (3) relied on sound pedagogical principles; and (4) faced a number of contextual challenges relevant to their curricula and teaching contexts.

Progressive Reduction of Captions in Language Learning

“…Recent research has examined caption benefits from the perspective of comprehension (Avello & Muñoz, 2023;Pujadas & Muñoz, 2020;Rodgers & Webb, 2017), vocabulary learning (Montero Perez, 2022), grammar (M. Lee & Révész, 2020;Pattemore & Muñoz, 2022), and pronunciation (Mohsen & Mahdi, 2021;Wisniewska & Mora, 2020). The focus has been primarily on quantitative and comparative designs and in studies conducted in laboratory-like conditions, contributing to the research-practice gap in language education (Cárdenas-Claros et al, 2023;Sato & Loewen, 2019). Moreover, explanations of why and how students use different types of captions remain top-down and do not often represent the L2 learners' views.…”