New media and English Language teaching in China : a case study based on multiliteracies pedagogy

With the increasing use of film, animation, software and the internet in English language teaching in China, investigating classroom teaching in the new media context has become an urgent task. As a collaboration among a linguist, an education researcher and a government official supervising primary school English language education, this paper reports a case study of a new media English lesson, taught by an experienced ‘model’ teacher, within the frameworks of systemic functional linguistics and multiliteracies pedagogy. It is found that while the use of native produced animation facilitated situated practice and overt instruction, the teaching needs improvement in terms of critical framing and transformed practice. The overall pedagogy still seems to be audiolingual, prioritizing the imitation of pronunciation and the drilling of grammar over the explanation of meaning and language use. We argue that new media should not become fancy tools for the old pedagogy; instead, teachers should change their teaching methods to enhance students’ competence in meaning making in various social contexts.