Multimodality in the EFL classroom a proposal to improve Spanish EFL students' oral skills

Abstract

This end of master’s degree project approaches the topic of multimodality from the perspective of social semiotic multimodal analysis and its implications within the education landscape. Considering the importance of developing students’ communicative competence in English so as to be successful both in academic and non-academic contexts, this project presents a multimodal proposal aimed at improving Spanish EFL students’ oral skills. Despite this, the lockdown of Spanish education centres due to the spread of COVID-19 impeded the implementation of this proposal in the Official School of Languages of Castelló. Therefore, the present master’s dissertation aims at finding out the perceptions that two EFL teachers have regarding multimodality, non-verbal communication, and the designed proposal. In order to do so, the project includes a literature review section which deals with multimodality and its relationship with education and non-verbal communication; a section focused on the multimodal proposal; and a section which details the methodology and the results of the study, which have been obtained by interviewing two EFL teachers and analysing linguistic legal documents that regulate foreign language courses around Europe and Spain. Finally, the discussion will prove that multimodal learning is still facing challenges that mainly depend on education policies and that need to be overcome because, in overall, multimodality contributes to make the teaching-learning process rich and successful.