Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to talking ELT, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. This is our final episode on the topic of multimodality, and I'm joined again by Ed, Charlotte and Nick to wrap up the conversation.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: So a lot of the conversation today has been around how teachers can support students and how, and how they can help learners develop their multimodal literacy. But also, publishers and materials designers play a huge role in this as well, and I think it's important to talk about that, too. So, Nick, I know you do a lot of materials design, and Ed, I know you do quite a bit for Oxford as well. And Charlotte, you do, you do some.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: I've dabbled, yes.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, I guess. I guess my question is, how do you ensure or do you ensure that the materials you design support multimodal literacy?
[00:01:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, for me, because they do, because I'm lucky in that I produce materials for myself, for my own company that I then market. And that's something that I really enjoy doing. And so because I'm really interested in it, I can sort of bake those things in.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:27] Speaker D: You know, so I can make sure that I'm using video and I can, you know, I can put in those tasks that are silent viewing that I love to do. And, you know, and if nobody likes them and they don't buy my materials, well, that, you know, that's not the end of the world. You know, I'm doing what I love. So, yeah, that's, that's fine. So. But yeah, you can put those things in. I think it's probably, maybe a, probably, maybe, probably maybe a bit more difficult if you're, if you're a bigger publisher and, you know, and particularly if you're kind of paper course book orientated, then it becomes much more difficult. How do you supply the video? And there are lots of issues around copyright and protecting that and things like that, but it's possible as a materials writer, it's not a challenge. I think it's more difficult as a publisher to ensure the integrity of your materials and things like that once they're out there.
[00:02:25] Speaker E: From my work perspective, I do a lot of work developing teacher education courses or professional development courses for teachers of English. And the move to online courses has definitely been a massive catalyst for this kind of thing. And I think that for many years, when these teacher education courses were done face to face, there seemed to be far less appetite or need for this because you had a trainer in the room working with a group of people and there was face to face contact, and everything felt very, very kind of engaging. But the move to online, and especially asynchronous learning online, was really a kind of.
It seemed to be a very, very kind of stark and rather, rather kind of dull environment. And one thing that we discovered was that participants found it very tiring and very kind of hard going to be endlessly reading and writing. So it was consumer text, write a response in a forum or something like that. We thought originally, oh, there's interactivity, so that's going to be enough. But in fact, there is a certain kind of text fatigue that sets in. And so it's been incredibly important for us, based on the feedback that we've had from teachers, to have alternatives to pure text input. So, for example, a recording, whether that's an audio recording or a video recording or an animation or some kind of combination of an educator speaking with some kind of infographic or graphic organizer to summarize those thoughts, so that when people are taking part in the course receptively, they have a whole balance of different types of information coming in different ways. And that's that, I think, has made it a much more engaging experience, but also from the. From the productive side as well. It has been, I think, really important for us to find ways for participants to share their opinions and their thoughts and their views, not just through typing them, which, you know, has both a kind of fatigue element, but also other kind of potential red flags, and instead move to a system where it can be a combination of text and audio video recording using the built in recorder in the platform that we use. So take a prompt, give your response in a short video that you make or add your ideas to a collaborative board. So I think that it's not only something which adds kind of style and. And has a kind of design appeal, but it's also something which prevents people from dropping out and sustains interest and makes the whole kind of learning experience a whole lot more engaging. And I think that now, if you try to run any. If you try to create any kind of resource for a teacher or for any other professional that didn't contain this variety of multimodal input, that it would probably not be massively successful.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. I can see that.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. I just want to pick up on sort of ed talking about, you know, this recent shift to online and how that's, you know, actually lent itself quite well to multimodal literacies.
But I think it's important to actually state, and I don't know, whether we have stated it so far that actually we're not talking about anything new when we talk about multimodality modal literacy. And I know we've shared a lot of anecdotes of, you know, back in the day when we used cassettes and did this with graphs and things.
And I think that's really important, actually, to say this. We're not talking about something that is new. We are talking about maybe new shifts to learning, which have in turn lent themselves well to using multimodal literacy as part of that sort of, of training or learning experience. When I think about when I was in the classroom and, you know, I would use YouTube videos a lot in my learning, in my, in my teachings and, you know, and course books as well would always come with some form of audio aspect to them.
And, you know, whether that was, you know, finding your place on the cassette player and getting ready to press play at that time when you needed it and having to rewind back whilst the students were engaged doing something, or it's, you know, the evolution to sort of using MP3 s in the class. So it's always been something that's been around. And I think, you know, consciously or not, we as educators have always used it in our lessons.
I don't know many teachers who have, you know, strictly stuck to using these more traditional forms of literacy that you mentioned at the start of this podcast, Chris yeah, but I think, you know, that can change depending maybe on where in the world you're teaching, of course, what resources you have access to. But, you know, the knowledge of those resources, I wouldn't say is a completely new concept to us as teachers and learners as well.
[00:07:48] Speaker E: I want to pick up on the word you used of having access to resources. One of the things I've definitely learned is this whole idea of accessibility of online materials.
And I learned about this the hard way through having a course participant who was visually impaired and so needed to have a reader who would take the PDF's, in this case, and read them out to them. So that immediately shows that there's a potential hindrance, but also a massive opportunity for using multimodal input that ticks a variety of boxes. So you have a text, but there's also a recording of that text and you have an image, but there's also an alternative text which describes what's in the image and that we make sure just through it's best practice for accessibility, really, but that will help us, that will shepherd us into that path of making sure that we have multimodal input because we don't want people to be excluded based on any kind of audio or visual impairment that they have. But it also provides and ensures a more engaging learning environment as well.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to ask about that in the way that multimodal texts do provide that opportunity for inclusivity in a new way. I think that's really important and.
[00:09:01] Speaker E: Yeah, and it has been, I think, badly neglected by publishers and by professionals over the years, and it's high time that we did something about that. So it's. I think it's better late than never, really, is the best way to kind of describe what's happening, but it's certainly important.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
[00:09:18] Speaker D: I mean, to come back to your original question about writing materials and things like that, I think it is very easy, or it could be very easy for a teacher listening to this and hearing about multimodal literacy, thinking, oh, my God, you know, that's something else I've got to learn how to do and how to change and, you know, how do I do that? And it sounds really complicated, but you know, what, in a way, is such a huge shift? You know, a lot of it is to do with using the materials that you already have in a slightly different way, with slightly. With some additional tasks that focus on additional things. You know, I think I was asked to go through an OUP course book just recently to look at ways that multimodal literacy could be built into it. And when I looked through it, you know, the writer had written some things in that were connected with those things already. They weren't highlighted as being multimodal literacy, but they were just there, you know, which is, it shows there is some move towards that. And it doesn't have to be this huge leap of change. It doesn't have to be.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: No, no. And I think that is really important to emphasize about everything we've talked about, that this doesn't have to be a big, scary new thing. It can just be adapting the practice you're currently doing and shifting the perspective.
[00:10:38] Speaker D: Slightly, and it can be dripped in. In little stages.
[00:10:41] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Speaker D: Things like that. It doesn't have to be kind of, you know, an overnight big shift or anything like that.
[00:10:46] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Because it's better to do. It's better, I would say it's better to support multimodal literacy a little bit effectively rather than try and do it all at once and, you know, and feel that you can't do it like. Like do what. I think it's important for teachers to do what they are able to do in their context, depending on what resources they have, access to, what assessment expectations their schools might provide for them, and what they feel comfortable with, I think it is important to tailor it to your own situation.
[00:11:20] Speaker E: Okay, so I've got a question for you guys.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:23] Speaker E: How, if we were kind of brainstorming ideas that a teacher could get for using this podcast recording, what kinds of things could they do with it, which would be an example of multimodal literacies in practice? I've got one idea to start with.
Show a photograph of the speakers.
[00:11:42] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:11:42] Speaker E: And then play the audio track of them speaking and try to match the speaker to the picture. Try to guess. Try to guess which one is which. And then to say why.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: I like that. I like that.
[00:11:52] Speaker E: Some might be easier than others.
[00:11:55] Speaker D: Don't know what you mean, Ed.
[00:11:57] Speaker E: Is that the kind of thing that would fit the, you know, is that an example of the kind of thing.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: We could do, though? Maybe rather than just photos, maybe some of the video with the sound off so you can see them doing their body language, right. Yes. Whose body language matches whose voice.
[00:12:12] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Okay, that's interesting. I like that.
[00:12:14] Speaker E: It could also be something, I guess, of like trying to. Trying to guess what they're talking about, either from a. Either from a menu of choices or through some other kind of hint or clue or suggestion.
Not quite sure how well that one's going to work, but I'm just. Just thinking on my feet here.
[00:12:38] Speaker D: You could do something about.
Something about body language connected with turn taking.
How does this person signal that they want to enter the conversation? How does this person signal that they've finished their turn?
[00:12:53] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:12:54] Speaker D: There's also a nice thing I tried doing once with getting students to count head nods. Apparently, when you're talking, you kind of. Your head bolts up and down a bit and, you know, when you finish a sentence, it drops.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: That's interesting.
[00:13:10] Speaker D: And so you can count. You should be able to count the head drops to see how many sentences they made.
[00:13:15] Speaker E: So what about playing the same clip twice, once on video and once on audio, and getting students to describe the ways in which it was a different experience. Superior, inferior, and why?
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. I like that.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: And maybe, you know, analysing sort of phonetics around what we're saying, you know, when the intonation is used with whatever it is we're talking about and how that maybe affects the message that we're trying to deliver.
[00:13:47] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker D: You could take a short clip of one person speaking and another person reacting and turn it into a meme.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:13:56] Speaker D: Please don't turn.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Please don't turn it into a meme. We don't want to be a meme.
[00:14:03] Speaker D: See, this one's a good one.
There's the response.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: There's the meme. There we go. There we go.
[00:14:10] Speaker D: And you're asking for it now.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: I know, I know. I shouldn't have said that. I've ruined it. It's going to be awful.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Oh, someone's always the butt of a joke to me.
[00:14:19] Speaker F: Yes. Yeah.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: And it will be me. We know it will be me.
[00:14:23] Speaker D: Another nice one.
Well, I think it's nice anyway. How did they decide what to wear? Oh, how did they choose what to wear? And what were they thinking when they chose what to wear for this?
[00:14:34] Speaker B: That's a good one. I like that.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: You also mentioned that we were coming back after lunch, Chris.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I did. I did.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: A change in energy.
[00:14:41] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: Pre lunch post.
[00:14:43] Speaker F: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: How do we know and how do we recognize that?
[00:14:46] Speaker D: Which one had coffee?
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Which one had coffee? Which one did.
[00:14:49] Speaker D: Which one had too much coffee?
[00:14:51] Speaker F: Yes.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: No, I like that. I think the other thing which popped to mind is looking at the actual, and this was slightly look at the actual format of the. Of the video podcast itself and analyzing that. So the very fact that the camera is going to be moving between us when we're talking, and that is a decision to have it focus on either the person talking or potentially on the person reacting to that and how those choices have been made in order to convey information.
And another one popped into my head. We have a lovely logo, and how did we decide upon that logo? And why does it connect to what we're talking about or the format of what we're doing? I guess.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: But, yeah, looking at a podcast as a genre of being able to communicate, you know, I think there's many an activity out there where we get learners to analyze, you know, the front page of a newspaper and think about, well, what is the aspects of this that, you know, tell us that this is a newspaper? You know, looking at, you know, the way that the language has been used, the layout, the design and. Yeah, why not apply those, those same analysis to a podcast? Yeah, it's a great, great idea, Chris.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think. I think that would work. I quite like that one. Sorry, there's one which. Oh, yeah, no, that. The other one popped in my head off the back of that. You could get students to create their own podcast.
[00:16:17] Speaker E: Exactly. I was thinking they could do a kind of recreation of this and give it little twists and added dimensions.
I used to do something with discussions where each speaker in the classroom would have a kind of mentor who would give them advice afterwards.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:32] Speaker E: And that's another thing that you could do. Choose one. Choose one of the four speakers to mentor. And, you know, as you watch, just make notes of things that you liked about what they did and said and things that you would suggest that they bring into their next podcast and why.
[00:16:46] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:16:47] Speaker E: Another way of making it a little bit more kind of immersive from the listener's perspective.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: That's really interesting. Well, thank you all so much for joining me to discuss all this day. It's been really interesting and really fun, and I've definitely learned quite a lot here, which I didn't know beforehand. So thank you all so much, and we hope everyone watching has enjoyed this conversation. If you have any questions, pop them down in the comments. So again, thank you all for joining me today. Thank you. It's been really good.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of talking ELT that brings us to the end of our series on multimodality, and.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: I just want to say a big.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Thank you to Ed, Charlotte, and Nick for joining us.
We'll be back soon with more episodes on topics like pronunciation, mediation and more, so make sure to like and subscribe if you want to hear those. While you're waiting, you can download our position paper on multimodality for more practical advice and resources to empower your teaching. Just follow the link in the description. Thanks for joining us.
