Multimodality in Education: The English Language Experience

Abstract

The art of teaching, generally, has been an issue attracting significant attention of educators in the world of schooling. Efforts at making positive impact on learners' performance has caused many teachers at different levels of education to seek alternative strategies to strengthen teaching and improve students' achievement. However, much of these alternative efforts have been traditional teacher-led, which exclude students from active participation in the process. Recent academic efforts have begun to explore the inclusion of learners, introducing learner-centred activities, aimed at bringing learners to the centre of classroom activities. One of such efforts is multimodality which is the use of multiple modes in teaching and learning. This paper reviews the place of engagement of multiple modes in the classroom, with emphasis on English language. The concept, the benefits of multimodality to the teacher and the learner and also the challenges to multimodality were discussed. The paper also presented reviews of some experimental studies carried out on the effects of multimodal strategy on English language learning in approval of the strategy. Suggestions on how to integrate multimodal learning into the classroom were also made.