A presentation with basic ideas on multimodality and communication in the EFL classroom.

1. MULTIMODAL
COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
LA SALLE UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES
BA IN SPANISH, ENGLISH, AND
FRENCH
YAMITH J. FANDIÑO
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

3. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays literacy has been understood as a
social practice, as a complex set of reading,
writing, and technological skills, which joins verbal,
visual, and other meaning-making resources
(Heberle, 2010, p. 101)

5. MULTILITERACY (Bezerra, 2011).
 Our globalized and culturally diverse demands a better
understanding of how verbal language and images construe
representations of our experience and relationships between
social actors as well as how these are brought together in a
text as a cultural construct.
 The New London Group: A new approach to literacy
pedagogy, made up of four components:
1. Situated practice refers to the need to approach whatever
meaning-making resource from the starting point of the
personal experiences of students so that they can locate
themselves in relation to the study to be done.

6. MULTILITERACY (Bezerra, 2011)
2. Overt instruction would be the moment to provide students
with the metalanguage to carry specific investigations; e.g. visual
grammar. It provides students with the tools to understand “new”
texts, images and ideas.
3. Critical framing is fostered by having students interpret the
contextual background and values which inform whatever social
practice and its related written, visual, or audio text.
4. Transformed practice is the idea that students start designing
their own practices based on the new knowledge in the same or in
new contexts. This is the moment when students could
demonstrate an appropriation of a new mindset towards the
reading of varied texts.

7. MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE (Haberle, 2010)

8. MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE (Haberle, 2010)
Meanings sent
in a social
context
Meanings
activated by a
cultural context
Skills in
compositional
meanings in
multimodal
texts.
Communication
in various visual
and verbal
modes from
particular
semiotic
systems

9. MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE (Haberle, 2010)
 Multimodal Communicative Competence (MCC)
It involves the knowledge and use of language concerning the
visual, audio and spatial dimensions of communication,
including computer-mediated communication.
ESL/EFL learners should be familiar with different literacy
practices that incorporate semiotic meanings.
The experience with different kinds of multimodal texts in the
English-speaking world become a very productive means for
developing students’ multimodal communicative competence
in English.

10. THE RELEVANCE OF MCC IN
ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)
 In MCC, students must interpret and produce texts which
integrate visual and verbal modalities, not to mention more
complex interweavings of sound, image and verbiage.
 MCC: Metafunctions in visual grammar.
- Representational/ideational: Verbal and visual construction of
events, objects, participants, and circumstances.
- Interactive/interpersonal: Verbal and visual construction of
relationships among speakers/listeners, writers/readers, and
viewers.
- Compositional/textual: Distribution of information value and
emphasis among elements of the text and image.

11. THE RELEVANCE OF MCC IN
ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)
 Metafunctions in visual grammar
- What representational or ideational meanings is this
(advertisement) conveying?
- What interpersonal and interactive relationships is this
(advertisement) activating?
- What compositional or textual strategies is this
(advertisement) using?

12. THE RELEVANCE OF MCC IN
ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)

13. THE RELEVANCE OF MCC IN
ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)

14. VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)
- The representational function
How participant, objects, and events are realized through
narrative or conceptual representations.
• Narrative representations
Actions and reactions connecting participants.
Thought and speech.

15. VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra, 2011)
• Conceptual representations: Images that can
- Classify explicit or implicit taxonomy,
- Show part-whole relationships (analytical structured or
unstructured),
- Attribute/suggest values.

16. VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra,
2011)
- The interactional metafunction
The interrelation between the image and the viewer. It can be analyzed in
terms of:
• Interaction (contact): Demand or offer,
• Social distance: Intimate (close shot), social (medium shot), or
impersonal (long shot),
• Attitude: Involvement (frontal angle) or detachment (oblique angle),
• Power: Represented participant (low angle), the viewer (high angle) or
equality (eye-level angle),
• Realism: use of color, context, depth, detail and light interplay.

17. VISUAL GRAMMAR (Bezerra,
2011)
- The compositional metafunction
The distribution of elements and information in the image. It can analyze:
• Information value: the layout regarding the left-right, top-bottom, or
center-margin positioning,
• Framing: strong or weak, whether elements are shown as connected
or disconnected,
• Salience: prominence through relative size, color or foregrounding.

18. MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED
STRATEGIES

19. Incorporation of multimodal skills
in ESL/EFL (Haberle, 2010)
PICTURE
COLLECTION
VIDEO GAMES ADVERTISEMENTS
- Data bank
- Sets emphasizing
different action or
concepts
(representational),
relations between
interlocutors
(interactive) and visual
arrangements
(compositional).
- Discuss visual-verbal
synergy.
- Research and present
about cultural heritage.
- Suitable and
motivating for
teenagers.
- Using games that are
based on movies
since the story and
the characters can
help negotiate
meaning and work on
reading images.
- Approach visual
narratives and have
visual analysis.
- Combination of
symbols, discourses,
and cultural forms.
- They provide
information about our
society, linking images
of people, products,
and well-being.
- Give details about the
pictures in terms of
visual metalanguage.
- Analyze the broader
sociocultural context.

20. MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED
STRATEGIES
 The appraisal system network (Martin, 2000).
1. ATTITUDE: Feelings and emotional reactions.
- Affect: Resources for expressing feelings.
- Judgment: Resources for judging character.
- Appreciation: Resources for valuing the worth of things.
2. GRADUATION: Resources to strengthen or weaken attitude.
- Force: Raise or lower the degree of evaluation.
- Focus: Sharpen or soften boundaries between categories.
-
3. ENGAGEMENT: The play of voices around opinions in discourse.
- Monogloss: Undialogized bare assertion
- Heterogloss: Dialogistic or alternative position.

21. MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED
STRATEGIES
 General questions (Meurer, 2001).
- How does this text represent the specific reality it relates to?
- What kind of social relations does this text reflect or bring about?
- What are the identities, or the social roles, involved in this text?
- How is the text organized to create certain representations, relations,
and identities?

22. MULTIMODAL-ORIENTED
STRATEGIES
 Analysis of metafunctions (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996)
- What is the picture/text about? Who are the participants involved,
and what circumstances are represented?
- What is the relationships between the viewer and what is viewed?
- How are the meanings conveyed? How are the representational
structures and the interactive/interpersonal resources integrated into
a whole?

23. CONCLUSION
In our globalized and culturally diverse world, “communication is
increasingly multimodal”, hence the importance of devoting attention in
the classroom to how semiotic resources other than verbal language
have been used to create identities and to position people socially,
especially for the fact that the school plays – or at least should play – a
vital role in people’s individual, social, cultural and political development
(Bezerra, 2011).

24. REFERENCES
 Bezerra, F. (2011). Multimodality in the EFL classroom. BELT journal, 2(2),
167-177.
 Canale, M. & M. Swain. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative
approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics,
1(1), 1-17.
 Heberle, V. (2010). Multimodal literacy for teenage EFL students. Caderno
de Letras, 27, 101-116.
 Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. Pride & J. Holmes
(Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269-293). Hasrmondworth, UK: Penguin.
 Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: the grammar of
visual design. London: Routledge.
 Martin, J. R. (2000). Beyond exchange: Appraisal systems in English. In S.
Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the
construction of discourse (pp. 142-175). Oxford: OUP.
 Meurer, J. L. (2001). The three non-mystifying questions you can ask and
explore in the texts you bring to your EFL classrooms. APLISC newsletter,
8(2), 3-4.