New Multimodal Designs for Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Semiotic multimodality theory speaks of new learning affordances in media ecologies, which is both theoretically and empirically echoed in UDL and in CALL literature, but owing to their neuro-didactic respectively technology-driven standpoints both approaches lack theoretical underpinnings for ecology and semiotic multimodality. Enhanced with multimodality theory and ecological perspectives UDL and CALL can crossbreed, forming a multimodally and ecologically aware inclusive design for language learning. This study from an ongoing project investigates the hypothesis from a theoretical and an empirical perspective, examining digital scaffolds. Multimodal-semiotic and ecological perspectives are used to analyse affordances and ecologies in CALL and UDL learning designs. From this analysis, a principled UDL-CALL learning design is constructed. For empirical testing, a mixed-methods research design is proposed, presenting preliminary results indicative of the design’s viability.