TY - JOUR
T1 - Developing multimodal communicative competence
T2 - Insights from “semantic gravity” and the Knowledge Process framework
AU - Dai, Yuanjun
AU - Wu, Zhiwei
N1 - Funding Information:
The study was funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation ( 2020M683165 ) and supported by a grant from the Department of Education of Guangdong Province , China (Project title: An application study of Music literature English-Chinese parallel corpora).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - This article explores how EFL students' multimodal communicative competence can benefit from a pedagogical design, informed by “semantic gravity” (i.e. the extent to which meaning is dependent on a context) and the Knowledge Process framework (i.e. epistemic moves of experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying). 68 Chinese EFL students were enrolled in a workshop-style course on becoming effective communicators. The study focused on a thematic unit about multimodal communication, which included two 90-min lessons and a take-home assignment (i.e. an essay on four subtitled versions of a nursery rhyme). The students were engaged in semantic waves between concrete multimodal products/practices and a multimodal metalanguage and pedagogical weaving between experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. Thematic analysis of the students’ essays showed that the students were able to (a) analyze the metafunctions in the four subtitled videos; (b) analyze modal contribution and intersemiotic complementarity; (c) evaluate the subtitles from a semiotic perspective; (d) offer ideas to recreate the subtitled nursery rhyme as a multimodal ensemble; and (e) recognize the multimodal nature of communication. Implications are drawn for EFL teachers to use “semantic gravity” and the Knowledge Process framework to move pedagogies in the direction of multimodality.
AB - This article explores how EFL students' multimodal communicative competence can benefit from a pedagogical design, informed by “semantic gravity” (i.e. the extent to which meaning is dependent on a context) and the Knowledge Process framework (i.e. epistemic moves of experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying). 68 Chinese EFL students were enrolled in a workshop-style course on becoming effective communicators. The study focused on a thematic unit about multimodal communication, which included two 90-min lessons and a take-home assignment (i.e. an essay on four subtitled versions of a nursery rhyme). The students were engaged in semantic waves between concrete multimodal products/practices and a multimodal metalanguage and pedagogical weaving between experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. Thematic analysis of the students’ essays showed that the students were able to (a) analyze the metafunctions in the four subtitled videos; (b) analyze modal contribution and intersemiotic complementarity; (c) evaluate the subtitles from a semiotic perspective; (d) offer ideas to recreate the subtitled nursery rhyme as a multimodal ensemble; and (e) recognize the multimodal nature of communication. Implications are drawn for EFL teachers to use “semantic gravity” and the Knowledge Process framework to move pedagogies in the direction of multimodality.
KW - EFL
KW - Knowledge process framework
KW - Multimodal communicative competence
KW - Semantic gravity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85109355127&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.system.2021.102561
DO - 10.1016/j.system.2021.102561
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85109355127
SN - 0346-251X
VL - 100
JO - System
JF - System
M1 - 102561
ER -