Enhancing multimodal communicative competence in ESP: the case of job interviews

ESP teaching has traditionally centred on the discourse practices of specific genres to develop students’ discursive competence in the target language. However, with the advent of studies on multimodality, there has been a growing recognition that new pedagogical approaches are required in ESP teaching. In this study, we discuss a research-informed pedagogical proposal to deal with job interviews, a highly routinised spoken genre that is typically addressed in Business English courses. Drawing on previous literature (Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2015). The things you do to know: an introduction to the pedagogy of multiliteracies. In: Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (Eds.), A pedagogy of multiliteracies. Learning by design. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, pp. 1–36; Lim, F.V. (2018). Developing a systemic functional approach to teach multimodal literacy. Funct. Ling. 5: 1–17), we present a pedagogical proposal that aims to promote students’ awareness of the multimodal nature of job interviews and develop their multimodal communicative competence through instruction, practice and feedback.

“Learning by Design”: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs

There have been multiple calls made in the sport science literature for the promotion of interdisciplinarity to progress some of sports’ most prevailing challenges. Designing practice environments that support learning represents one such challenge, particularly given contemporary perspectives of skill acquisition and motor learning calls for coaches to realign their role—progressing toward the designers of practice tasks that promote athlete-environment interactions. In doing so, performers learn through exploration, deepening a relationship with their performance environment as they solve problems based on changing and interacting constraints. This paper illustrates an interdisciplinary approach to the area of learning through sport practice by adapting established principles embedded in video game designs. Specifically, 13 principles common to good video game designs are described, with practical examples of each provided across different sports. Fundamentally, this paper aims to offer sports practitioners with an overview and application of key principles that could support learning by design. Beyond this, the ideas presented here should further illustrate the value of interdisciplinarity in sports research and practice.

Teaching With Technology, Learning by Design

I decided to write this article after attending a three-week workshop on “Teaching Technology, learning by Design” organized by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia. Basically, taking a look at the above topic throws up quite a number of conflicting and complex thoughts in the mind of the average teacher but considering what evolution has come into the teaching profession in recent, modern times, it is only expedient to look deeply into the subject. Technology as it were, does not literarily suggest the mere use of a Computer or a certain computer program just for the benefit of using a modern, pedagogical teaching method but a goal-driven, well-measured ideology to achieve specific results that go far beyond the four walls of the classroom. The concept of Teaching with Technology Learning by Design is a well-defined idea meant to dissect and treat real-life problems in the classroom and offer possible solutions to such problems with the use of modern technology which creates a near-real life learning and development experience not only for the students involved but also the tutors.

Sprinting to the Finish Line: The Benefits and Challenges of Book Sprints in OER Faculty-Graduate Student Collaborations

This article investigates the results of a book sprint experience whose main objective was the development of instructional modules for an open textbook for the teaching of Spanish as a second language. Six graduate students at a public American university participated in the project for a week, working in pairs in the creation of activities that required the incorporation of the tenets of the dual pedagogical frameworks of performance- and literacy-based instruction (as realized through learning by design). Data were collected through both an opinion survey and the assessment of samples of the participants’ products. The results of the survey showed that graduate students felt that being part of the book sprint had been beneficial both at the professional and personal levels, but they had also experienced difficulties similar to those reported in previous studies. The products analyzed pointed to a lack of connection between the required pedagogical tenets and the materials developed, which has also been reported in existing works on pre- and in-service teachers as materials developers. The article discusses how these results could have been a consequence of the structure of the book sprint, and it offers recommendations for future activities of this kind.