10TH SPRING RESEARCH CONFERENCE: PAULA WOOD-BORQUE PRESENTS HER TYPOLOGY OF ACTIVITIES TO EXPLOIT AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS IN EFL
Paula Wood-Borque was one of our team members who participated in the 10th Spring Research Conference, entitled “Advances in Multilingual Learning and Teaching”, on the 14th of March 2025. This international research event is annually organised by the GRAM Research Group and takes place at the UIC Barcelona Campus.
As the title of her presentation suggests, "Bringing films and series into the EFL classroom: From a multimodal analysis to practical applications", Paula Wood-Borque proposed a typology of activities based on a multimodal analysis of scenes from English-language films and series. One of her aims was to illustrate how, by leveraging audiovisual materials, students' multiliteracies and multimodal communicative competence could be fostered in the EFL Secondary Education classroom.
Find the abstract of her talk here:
Bringing films and series into the EFL classroom: From a multimodal analysis to practical applications
Nowadays, it is widely acknowledged that communication and learning cannot be fully developed by focusing just on language, since it is just one of many diverse sign systems we rely on to communicate (Hafner, 2024). Due to this, and because most texts our learners encounter are digital and multimodal, teachers in general, and those in multilingual classrooms in particular, need to be aware of the ways in which they can integrate multiple modes into their practice (Kessler, 2022). One way of bringing multimodality to the fore and to develop students’ multimodal communicative competence is through the integration of audiovisual materials such as films and series. Previous research has pointed out multiple benefits for language learning as a source of simulated naturalistic speech and the variety of topics, accents and cultures they can bring to the classroom (e.g. Bednarek, 2018; Donaghy, 2019).
The main aim of this paper is to present a typology of varied activities and tasks that can be brought into the Secondary Education English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom based on the results of a multimodal analysis of different scenes from films and series in English. For this, I will show how the scenes can be analysed multimodally in order to determine their salient verbal and non-verbal features. I will also argue that carrying out a multimodal analysis of the scenes can help English language teachers
understand what type of activity or task could better suit said scenes. Based on previous categorisations of video-based activities and their sequencing (Goldstein & Driver, 2015; Lim-Fei & Tan Kok Yin, 2017), I will propose a typology of activities and tasks that can be designed and implemented based on different scenes. The objective will be not only to develop students’ communicative competence, but also to promote their multimodal communicative competence (Royce, 2006) and multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2005) in the Secondary Education EFL classroom. Examples of scenes analysed and the corresponding types of activities and tasks designed will be shared.
The typology of activities and tasks presented can be useful for teachers to adapt and create their own materials for the classroom. As it will be discussed, EFL teachers’ training on visual and multimodal literacies should be promoted in order to be able to make an effective use of audiovisual materials and meet the needs of their students these days.
References:
Bednarek, M. (2018). Language and Television Series: A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2005). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London: Routledge
Donaghy, K. (2019). Using films to teach languages in a world of screens. In C. Herrero & I. Vanderschelden (Eds.), Using film and media in the language classroom: Reflections on research-led teaching (pp. 3-16). Multilingual Matters.
Goldstein, B. & Driver, P. (2015). Language Learning with Digital Video. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hafner, C. (2024). Multimodal discourse analysis and second language research. In B. Paltridge & M. T. Prior (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Discourse (pp. 24-37). New York: Routledge.
Kessler, M. (2022). Multimodality. ELT Journal, 76(4), 551-554. doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccac028
Lim, F. V. & Tan, K.Y.S. (2017). Multimodal translational research: Teaching visual texts. In O. Seizov & J. Wildfeuer (Eds.) New studies in multimodality: Conceptual and methodological elaborations (pp.175-200). New York: Bloomsbury.
Royce, T. D. (2006). Multimodal Communicative Competence in Second Language Contexts. In T. D. Royce W. & Bowcher (Eds.), New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse (pp. 361-390). New York: Routledge.