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Multimodality and Digital Literacy in the English Language Syllabi across Europe.

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Abstract and Figures

This paper presents a discussion on the main issues and challenges brought about by the needs of digitalisation, such as the digital divide, in Europe. It focuses explicitly on the formal introduction of digital and multimodal literacy, or literacies, in European syllabi and curricula with the aim of expanding on current academic and professional programmes, that traditionally are based on the development of technical skills in learners, thus overlooking socio-semiotic and critical competence that is today more than needed in the labour market. To do so, we will first address the notion of multimodal and digital literacy tracing back its origins to traditional notions of literacy in the Western context, then we will review the European agenda on digital literacy after a brief overview of the position of Italy within the World Economic Forum (2014-2015) in terms of global competitiveness, quality of education, ICT use and other digital-related indexes. We will then focus on the educational domain by describing how joint syllabi and curricula in the European context can and indeed should be designed by taking into due account how collaborative learning can improve learning processes when it comes to incorporating English language classes in digital environments. The next sections will be respectively devoted to a more thorough discussion on the role of multimodal approaches to communication, especially in the context of foreign language teaching and learning, subsequently focusing on peer-learning practices. In the last section, we will give an example for the construction of a joint syllabus. We will end our discussion by arguing the case for an integrated approach that blends all the notions and components that are in our view useful for the development of syllabi that encourage the enhancement of transversal skills in the European context.
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Sommario/Contents
Le poLitiche socio-Linguistiche deLL’unione europea
Socio-linguiStic inveStigationS of eu policieS
L’EUROmosaico
e la sda del complesso incastro
delle sue tessere 4
Flavia Cavaliere
Euro English – controversial Esperanto
or de facto transnational and legal language? 10
Lucia Abbamonte
Università degli Studi della Campania L. Vanvitelli
“Siamo o non siamo europei?”
Brexit, lingua e migrazione 28
Mariavita Cambria
Università di Messina
L’ E UROmosaico linguistico:
scenario e politiche di tutela 42
Flavia Cavaliere
Università degli Studi di Napoli – Federico II
TTIP: much ado about nothing? 81
Domitilla Sartorio
Royal Holloway University – London/
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
iL variegato scenario cross-cuLturaLe dei paesi deLL’unione europea
lingua-cultural analySeS within eu countrieS
Facing anxiety with irony:
a look at neologisms
in contemporary Europe 100
Marina Niceforo
Università degli Studi di Napoli “Parthenope
Proverbs as an index of national identity.
A cross-cultural study 112
Douglas Ponton
Università di Catania
Ideas Worth Subtitling:
Ted Talks on the Cognitive Map of Europe 143
Eleonora Sasso
Università G. D’Annunzio – Chieti
Metodi e tecniche di insegnaMento/apprendiMento
deLLe Lingue aLLinterno deLL’unione europea
teaching/language learning acroSS eu
Multilinguismo e plurilinguismo
nella UE: una realtà in trasformazione,
una opportunità per tutti 159
Amelia Bandini
Università degli Studi di Napoli – Federico II
Mirrored aims, methods,
materials and assessment in teaching English for political science
as reected in two Italian
and Romanian higher educational
environments 171
Cristina Pennarola & Silvia Osman
Università degli Studi di Napoli – Federico II
Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University – Bucarest
Multimodality and Digital Literacy
in the English Language Syllabi
across Europe 188
Sandra Petroni & Maria Grazia Sindoni
Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata
Università di Messina
Multimodality and Digital Literacy
in the English Language Syllabi
across Europe
Sandra Petroni* & Maria Grazia Sindoni** ***
Abstract
This paper presents a discussion on the main issues and challenges brought
about by the needs of digitalisation, such as the digital divide, in Europe. It fo-
cuses explicitly on the formal introduction of digital and multimodal literacy, or
literacies, in European syllabi and curricula with the aim of expanding on cur-
rent academic and professional programmes, that traditionally are based on the
development of technical skills in learners, thus overlooking socio-semiotic and
critical competence that is today more than needed in the labour market. To
do so, we will rst address the notion of multimodal and digital literacy tracing
back its origins to traditional notions of literacy in the Western context, then
we will review the European agenda on digital literacy after a brief overview of
the position of Italy within the World Economic Forum (2014-2015) in terms of
global competitiveness, quality of education, ICT use and other digital-related
indexes. We will then focus on the educational domain by describing how joint
syllabi and curricula in the European context can and indeed should be designed
by taking into due account how collaborative learning can improve learning pro-
cesses when it comes to incorporating English language classes in digital envi-
ronments. The next sections will be respectively devoted to a more thorough dis-
cussion on the role of multimodal approaches to communication, especially in
the context of foreign language teaching and learning, subsequently focusing on
peer-learning practices. In the last section, we will give an example for the con-
struction of a joint syllabus. We will end our discussion by arguing the case for
*** The authors designed and discussed this paper together. However, the Introduction,
sections 1 and 4 were written by Maria Grazia Sindoni, whereas sections 2, 3, and 6
were written by Sandra Petroni.
* Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”
** Università degli Studi di Messina
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an integrated approach that blends all the notions and components that are in
our view useful for the development of syllabi that encourage the enhancement
of transversal skills in the European context.
Introduction: preliminary remarks on digital literacy
Literacy is traditionally considered as one of the main goals of the so-called
“developed countries” and fundamentally associated with education and
success in life. As literacy used to be exclusively associated with reading,
writing, and arithmetic, controversies may ensue as regards the primacy
of reading and writing in literate societies vis-à-vis the mode of speaking
in oral societies (Sindoni, 2012). As well as with the mode of writing and
reading, literacy has always been attached to other Western-centred val-
ues, such as formal instruction in education and the crucial role played by
institutions such as schools, universities, ecc. However, the notion of liter-
acy has embraced other skills and abilities in the digital era (James, 2013).
As recent research literature attests, the more recent notion of digital lit-
eracy or, to put it in more precise terms, multimodal literacies, has broad-
ened the previous and somewhat outdated concept of literacy tout court,
thus including the mastery of skills other than reading and writing. Jones
and Hafner, for example, argue that digital literacy cannot be merely de-
ned as the ability to master a set of operational and technical skills, but is
more complex and includes «the ability to creatively engage in particular
social practices, to assume appropriate social identities, and to form or main-
tain various social relationships» (Jones and Hafner 2012: 12).
Digital and multimodal literacies also encapsulate a wide range of semi-
otic resources that users need to learn to recognize and discern, beyond
the preliminary acquisition of a set of operational and technical strategies,
such as surng the net, logging in to a social platform or email account, or
searching the web for specic information. What is needed for a European
citizen to be fully functional in digital environments cannot be limited to
being able to perform basic “technical” operations, but encompasses an in-
dividual’s sociosemiotic skills, in particular being able to participate in so-
cial practices, develop social identities and engage in social relationships.
Hence, sociality and sociability are connected to notions of literacy. Both
are changing constantly and further broaden previous views on education
that were more focused on solitary activities or skills, such as reading or
writing (Lankshear and Knobel 2008).
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Furthermore, the social practices involved imply communication, relation-
ships and reection that can be interpreted as central in any process of
development, such as learning processes. Communication and reection
(meaning and understanding in Halliday’s terms 1978) are central in this
approach. Being involved with digital literacies means being involved with
practices of intercultural communication, socio-cultural exchange, self-
and peer learning. Strategies are necessary to learn how to use tools and
their initial technical affordances to new environments or new needs. For
example, reading a textbook is different from reading a Twitter thread. The
latter is an operation that requires particular skills, such as understanding
remediation and knowing Twitter syntax, thus implying a different deploy-
ment and use of the semiotic resources involved in the two reading pro-
cesses. Conversely, writing a status update on Facebook using a keyboard
is different from writing it using a smartphone. The semiotic affordances
involved in this last example are the same, but what changes is the techni-
cal difference in operating the writing process on a PC or on a smartphone
(Hartley, 2010).
All these skills and abilities cannot be taken for granted. People usually
learn how to search the web on their own, without formal instruction. The
so-called “digital natives” were born in the digital age, so they are auto-
matically believed to be able to perform technical and operational actions
in appropriate and effective ways: for example, they can search the web,
use a web page for their purposes, ll in an online registration form, ecc.
However, this cannot be equated with the idea that these people, especial-
ly if they are young people, are able to engage with the more subtle com-
municative and social practices that are embedded in digital experiences.
Children or young people may encounter many different kinds of risks,
some of which can seriously threaten their safety, for example in terms
of privacy violations, cyberbullying, identity theft, ecc. (Edgington ,2011;
Mitchell, 2011).
Reading and writing are literacy skills that are most typically learnt at an
early age and in formal instruction contexts, such as schools, so they are un-
ambiguously taught and learnt. Digital literacies, as this section has briey
outlined, are more complex, cannot be described in mere technical terms
and imply a range of social abilities that cannot be taken for granted, and
especially so because they need to be put into practice outside monitored
environments, such as school (Unsworth, 2006). The overarching goal of
this paper is to provide guidance and direction to different stakeholders
(e.g., teachers, parents, caretakers, children, institutions, society at large)
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in terms of potentialities, affordances, dangers and learning advantages
(Marsh, 2004) of digital and multimodal literacies in terms of their incor-
poration in European syllabi and curricula.
1. European agenda on digital literacy
Before a more detailed discussion on the position of Italy within European
language and digital policies, it is useful to provide some context at a glob-
al level. At the time of writing this paper, the World Economic Forum has
ranked Italy 49th in terms of global competitiveness (after Turkey, Oman,
Malta and Panama), 35th for tertiary education enrolment rate (after
Bulgaria), 67th for quality of education system (after Senegal). These and
other rankings for Italy, based on the 5th pillar, dealing with “Higher Edu-
cation and Training” (5.02-5.07 on Table 1), the 7th pillar “Labour market
efciency” (7.0-7.8 on Table 1), and the 9th pillar of Technological readi-
ness”, are reported below:
Index Position Two countries immedia-
tely preceding Italy
Global competitiveness (gene-
ral) 49/144 Malta (47), Panama (48)
5.02 Tertiary education enrol-
ment rate 35/144 Uruguay (33), Bulgaria
(34)
5.03 Quality of education
system 67/144 Latvia (65), Senegal (66)
5.06 Internet access in schools 91/144 Pakistan (89), Cape Verde
(90)
5.07 On-the-job training 75/144 Colombia (73), Oman (74)
7.0 Labour market efcien-
cy 136/144 Uruguay (134), Sri Lanka
(135)
7.8 Country capacity to retain
talent 121/144 Lithuania (119), Zimbabwe
(120)
9.1 Technological adoption 100/144 Madagascar (98), El Salva-
dor (99)
9.2. ICT use 26/144 Japan (24), New Zealand
(25)
Table 1. Competitiveness rankings (WEF 2014-2015)
Table 1 provides some interesting insights, especially if we compare differ-
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ent data sets. In particular, if we compare the rather good tertiary educa-
tion enrolment rate, that is a quantitative index, with the general quality
of the education system (a qualitative index including other sub-indexes of
performance for different areas, such as maths, science, management and
Internet access in schools), the position of Italy dramatically drops down.
In other words, a relative good rate in enrolment in higher education does
not correspond to equally good services provided in qualitative terms. Fur-
thermore, if we relate technological adoption (an index that incorporates
availability of latest technologies, rm-level technology absorption, FDI
and technology transfer) to ICT use (an index that includes Internet us-
ers, xed-broadband Internet subscriptions, Internet bandwidth, and mo-
bile-broadband subscriptions), data are even more revealing. Italy ranks
100th for technological adoption, that can be broadly dened as the inclu-
sion of technology on the macro-levels of society, for example in terms of
technology transfer, thus performing very badly, whereas, not surprisingly,
it ranks 26th for the Internet personal use.
If we narrow down our point of observation, we nd other signicant data
for the present discussion in the Digital Economy & Society Index (DESI,
2016). DESI is a multidimensional index that reports on some indexes with
reference to Europe’s digital performance, also tracing the evolution of
EU member states in digital competitiveness. The ve main dimensions
included are: 1) connectivity (deployment and quality of broadband infra-
structure); 2) human capital (skills needed to take advantage of the chanc-
es offered by a digital society); 3) use of Internet (a range of activities, e.g.
consuming digital texts, such as videos, blogs, ecc., and using e-commerce,
online banking and other digital services); 4) integration of digital technology
(digitisation of business and their exploitation of the online sales channel);
5) digital public services (digitisation of public services, e.g. e-government).
Italy’s performance is particularly poor, as it ranks 25th out of 28 Euro-
pean Member States in 2016, losing one position since 2015, in which it
ranked 24th. As the Country prole for Italy (DESI, 2016) illustrates, when
discussing the poor performance in the “human capital” dimension:
The major cause of this lack of digital skills is to be found in the low
level of education (the two are highly correlated) of the Italian popu-
lation (only 42% of the population has an education level above lower
secondary − ISCED 2 − the fourth lowest value in the EU28), and in
the important share of aged population (Country prole, 2016: 3).
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The factors identied as detrimental to the lack of digital skills in Italy that
will not presumably increase in the short-medium run, are the low level
of education of the Italian population and the signicant share of aged
population. When it comes to Internet use, Italians engage in online ac-
tivities less than average European users. Only the consumption of digital
texts, such as videos and games is higher (52%) than EU average, whereas
e-banking (43%) and shopping online (39%) are less common. Reading on-
line news is signicantly lower than in all other European countries (57%)
and is even decreasing in 2016, maybe due to an increase of content on
demand (DESI, 2016).
Even though Italy’s performance in the context of digital economy and so-
ciety performance is so poor, all other European Member States have se-
rious issues with the integration of digitality into education. Between 50%
and 80% of students in EU countries never use digital textbooks, exercise
software, broadcasts/podcasts, simulations or learning games (European
Commission, 2013a). Most teachers at primary and secondary level do not
consider themselves as “digitally condent” or able to teach digital skills
effectively, and 70% would like more training in using ICTs. Pupils in Latvia,
Lithuania and the Czech Republic are the most likely to have Internet ac-
cess at school (more than 90%), twice as much as in Greece, Italy and Cro-
atia (around 45%, see European Commission, 2013a). Teachers do not use
regularly ICT-based activities at all grades, and the lowest frequencies are
reported in Greece and Italy (European Commission, 2013b: 77). In Lithu-
ania around 70% and in Romania around 65% of students at all grades are
taught by teachers for whom it is compulsory to participate in ICT training,
while only 13% or less of students are taught by such teachers in Luxem-
bourg, Austria and Italy (European Commission, 2013b: 89).
In response to all these issues, and consistently with the ndings of the
“Digital Agenda for Europe 2010-2020” (see European Commission, 2010),
which reported on a dramatic gap in the best and worst performances of
digital technologies use among EU Member States, the European Com-
mission has launched the “Opening Up Education” action plan in 2013. It
is a plan designed to address a wide range of issues in the area of digital
literacy in educational domains, at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
As 90% of jobs will require digital skills by 2020, schools and universities
have to be fully equipped to tackle these market needs. The “Opening up
Education” action plan, in particular, is addressed to three main areas:
1. Creating opportunities for organisations, teachers and learners to
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innovate;
2. Increased use of Open Educational Resources (OER), ensuring that
educational materials produced with public funding are available to
all; and
3. Better ICT infrastructure and connectivity in schools (European
Commission, 2013a).
On the press release, Androulla Vassiliou,Commissioner for Education,
Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, claimed that:
The education landscape is changing dramatically, from school to uni-
versity and beyond: open technology-based education will soon be a
‘must have’, not just a ‘good-to-have’, for all ages. We need to do more
to ensure that young people especially are equipped with the digital
skills they need for their future. It’s not enough to understand how to
use an app or program; we need youngsters who can create their own
programs. Opening up Education is about opening minds to new learn-
ing methods so that our people are more employable, creative, innova-
tive and entrepreneurial (Vassiliou in European Commission, 2013a).
Initiatives linked to “Opening up Education” are funded within Erasmus+
schemes, the EU programme for education, training, youth and sport, and
Horizon 2020, the research and innovation programme, as well as the EU
structural funds. In particular, Erasmus+ offers funding to education pro-
viders and institutions to ensure business models are adapted to techno-
logical change and to support teachers’ development through open online
courses (see European Commission, 2013a). All educational materials sup-
ported by Erasmus+ are freely available to the public under open licences
(see European Commission, 2013a).
2. Joint syllabi and collaborative learning in higher education
Along with the “Opening up Education” initiative, there is another essen-
tial facet of the new European education and training programmes, that
is, fostering joint curricula, and this action is inevitably interconnected
with the endorsement of digital skills. The reasons for both providing and
participating in a joint study programme are numerous. According to the
Erasmus Mundus programme, this was traditionally seen as a means to
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integrate and internationalise curricula, develop international academic
collaboration and provide a unique study experience to students, keen to
learn from different education systems (European Commission, 2016). Of
course, the launch of the Bologna Process (1999) played a pivotal role in
this initiative, as can be read in the Prague Declaration (2000):
In order to further strengthen the important European dimensions of
higher education and graduate employability, Ministers called upon
the higher education sector to increase the development of modules,
courses and curricula at all levels with ‘European’ content, orienta-
tion or organisation. This concerns particularly modules, courses and
degree curricula offered in partnership by institutions from different
countries and leading to a recognised joint degree.1
With the inclusion of the Erasmus Mundus programme in that of Eras-
mus+, where mobility and employability are key criteria on which higher
education applicants are evaluated and on which selected projects subse-
quently need to report, more attention has been paid to the link between
joint curricula initiatives and their impact on the labour market. The devel-
opment of joint programmes, in fact, entails:
1. Quality enhancement (both of academic content and of the poten-
tial mobility experience embedded in the programme)
2. Convergence and compatibility of degree systems
3. Improvement of graduates’ employability (European Commission, 2016).
In the light of what the European Commission wishes for and invests on the
future of European Higher Education stakeholders, designing joint syllabi
represents another facet of the European agenda on joint curricula. What
has been theorised for universally designed curricula by means of the Uni-
versal Design Learning (UDL) approach (Meyer and Rose, 1998, 2000, 2005;
Rose and Meyer, 2002) is perfectly applicable to any single syllabus aimed
at providing scaled competence concerning all topics and subjects with the
support of both digital technologies and English as a Lingua Franca. A syllabus
design entails reections on instructional goals, methods, materials, and as-
sessments that are exible enough to accommodate learner differences and
needs. Similarly, when a curriculum and/or a syllabus are designed to enable
all kinds of learners to access and progress in their programme, all students,
1 http://www.ehea.info/Uploads/Declarations/PRAGUE_COMMUNIQUE.pdf.
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including those with disabilities, will take advantages from having more ex-
ible learning environments. As Meo (2008: 23) claims,
UDL is a means of identifying and removing barriers in the curricu-
lum while building scaffolds, supports, and alternatives that meet the
learning needs of a wide range of students. Specically, a UDL curric-
ulum is characterized by the provision of:
1. multiple or exible representations of information and concepts
(the “what” of learning),
2. multiple or exible options in expression and performance (the
“how” of learning),
3. multiple or exible ways to engage learners in the curriculum (the
“why” of learning; Rose and Meyer, 2002: 6).
Furthermore, a joint syllabus can be used in different learning contexts
simultaneously, shared by different learning groups, who participate ac-
tively in knowledge building and in many other learning practices, such
as, designing collaboratively materials and reecting metalinguistically
on their productions. Thus, planning joint syllabi means to foster com-
munity building, support social interactions (teachers-teachers, teach-
ers-students, students-students), cooperation and collaboration for
learning and knowledge construction, and the presence of digital tech-
nology and computer-mediated exchanges transform these processes in
good practices.
The emerging paradigm of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
(CSCL) (Koschmann, 1996; Lipponen, Hakkarainen and Paavola, 2004;
O’Malley and Scanlon, 1989) is developing as a dynamic, interdiscipli-
nary, and international eld of investigation, focused on how technol-
ogy can facilitate the sharing and creation of knowledge and expertise
via peer interaction and group learning processes, as can be realized
through a joint syllabus. The CSCL approach draws on a range of situ-
ations in which interactions occur among students using digital tools to
improve the learning environment. It implies the use of technology to en-
dorse both asynchronous and synchronous exchanges between students
on-site as well as students who are geographically distributed. Resta and
La Ferrière (2007) identify four instructional reasons for the use of tech-
nology in support of collaborative learning:
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1. To prepare students for the knowledge society (collaboration skills
and knowledge creation) [...]
2. To enhance student cognitive performance or foster deep under-
standing [...]
3. To add exibility of time and space for cooperative/collaborative
learning [...]
4. To foster student engagement and keep track of student coopera-
tive/collaborative work (online written discourse) (2007: 69-70).
The rst motive follows UNESCO directives which claim that higher ed-
ucation has to respond to the social demands of a highly diverse, interde-
pendent, and technologically rich workplace that has undergone an ex-
plosive development of knowledge in many elds that calls for teamwork
(UNESCO, 2005). As Schrage (1990: 40) highlights, in fact, collaboration is
«the process of shared creation».
Besides, the new learning environments become virtual and work is car-
ried out by individuals who are situated differently in place and time. Due
to this trend, teachers need to create opportunities for their students to
learn to work independently of place and time.
Collaborative tasks are linked to student engagement in knowledge build-
ing. Moreover, teachers who use CSCL can observe student understanding
and achievement in collaborative learning activities (Holliman and Scan-
lon, 2006). Additionally, learners can assess what they wrote or what their
peers wrote, and teachers can evaluate the discourse of community mem-
bers using computational data monitoring procedures (e.g., open access
e-platform) for facilitation, moderation, or grading purposes.
In line with the mission of European initiatives and programmes for high-
er education where the transdisciplinarity between digital skills acquisi-
tion and any elds of knowledge is the baseline through which joint pro-
grammes and/or syllabi can be realised, Resta and La Ferrière’s concluding
remarks strongly recommend this claiming that:
The last 20 years have been highly productive for CSCL. The advanc-
es of the learning sciences, combined with the needs of the knowl-
edge society, have heightened the requirements for exible (time and
space) and challenging (problem-solving and knowledge building)
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learning environments. New analytical frameworks, derived from a
number of theoretical perspectives (e.g., activity theory), offer new
directions for research on collaborative learning (2007: 77).
3. A multimodal approach for designing an English language syllabus
Multimodality is another pivotal issue in any form of educational practic-
es and, in particular, in the eld of foreign language learning and teaching
(FLLT). It is undeniable that, by nature, any pedagogical and instructional
practices used in this domain have always been represented within a mul-
timodal dimension and by means of multimodal resources, although prob-
ably not acknowledged as how we understand multimodality today.
As Farias, Obilinovic and Orrego state (2011: available online), if viewed
from a sociosemiotic perspective (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006),
the multimodal input the foreign language learner is exposed to trig-
gers cognitive responses and processes that are both mental and
social in that they are inuenced by the individual’s background
knowledge and, at the same time, conditioned by the social context.
For these authors visual representations are socially construct-
ed out of the affordances made available by particular cultures. [...]
It is actually from this sociosemiotic view that FLLT can establish a
stronger dialog with multimodal theories to the extent that the very
setting in which learning takes place, which includes the classroom,
the teacher, other learners, the textbook and the teaching materials,
can be looked at not as mere linguistic objects but as cultural artifacts
whose architecture, designs, affordances and learning potential are
not neutrally constructed.
The inclusion of multimedia and digital technologies in these practices
should push scholars and teachers to consider any forms and modalities of
language interactions as a simultaneous ensemble of semiotic resources
that together contribute to produce meaning (Bezemer and Jewitt, 2010;
Bezemer and Kress, 2008; Kress, 2010). However, over the last decades,
this inclusion has favoured only the strong presence of technology in
teaching and learning practices without exploiting their real affordances in
meaning making but, above all, without raising a full “multimodal” aware-
ness about how meaning construction works. Multimediality and multimo-
dality are two separate domains and if there is a need to train skilled learn-
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ers in terms of digital literacy and foreign/second language competences
at the same time multimodal communicative competences (Royce, 2007)
need to be part of these syllabi. Learner’s goals are no longer those only
linked to written and oral skills, but also to those target skills described
by multimodal markers such as layout, colour, font, image, multimodal or-
chestration (i.e. if the combined use of all modal resources of a text are
coherent and suitable to its communicative purpose), multimodal discur-
sive practice (i.e. if the different modes are used and combined according
to the practices of the most relevant discourse community), informativity
(i.e. how informativity is fully achieved through salience, information value
and framing), ecc.
This approach is also supported by the inevitable reection on the uses
of technologies in education as cognitive tools (dened also as cognitive
technology, technologies of the mind, mind tools) that can help students to
cope with cognitive processes that would be inaccessible otherwise (Harp-
er et al. 2000). According to Paivio’s Dual-Channel Theory (DCT), human
beings use different channels to process visual and auditory information
(Paivio 1971; Sadoski and Paivio 2001). The pivotal assumption of this the-
ory states that cognition consists of two separate coding systems of men-
tal representations that are organized hierarchically, one system focused
on language and the other focused on nonverbal objects and events, if ap-
plied, for instance, to reading and writing. In the verbal system information
is processed sequentially, whereas in the nonverbal system information is
organized nonsequentially (e.g., spatially). The integration of multimodali-
ty and Second/Foreign Language Acquisition (S/FLA) is, then, theoretically
motivated by the following common practices (Farias et al. 2011):
1. exposing the learner to more than just one encounter” with new
item through more than just one mode in order to contribute to
its retention. ‘Remembering’ is only an elementary cognitive skill.
However, it is pivotal for the use of higher-order cognitive skills
such as application or analysis.
2. Asking the learner to produce meaning by representing the item
through more than just one mode.
3. Transforming declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. For
example, for the language rules to become automatic in use, media
and technologies may be useful as a means to convey formal rules of
the foreign language by presenting this explicit linguistic knowledge
in combination with multimodal productions (e.g. digital artefacts).
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When learners study a second language they tend to elicit a special type
of attention called “noticing” (Schmidt, 2010), independently whether the
learning is intentional or incidental. If they are stimulated to pay attention
constantly and selectively they become more active and motivated and
multimodality plays a crucial role in this mechanism (Farias, Obilinovic
and Orrego, 2011; Petroni, 2011). Paying attention develops noticing,
«and motivated learners may also try harder and more persistently to un-
derstand the signicance of noticed language, achieving higher levels of
awareness and enhanced learning as a result» (Schmidt, 2010: 734). Ac-
cording to Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis, «input does not become intake
for language learning unless it is noticed, that is, consciously registered.»
(idem: 721). He offers a further insight into the concept of awareness in
relation to noticing by arguing that awareness can be constructed on two
levels: a low level that is noticing, «the conscious registration of attended
specic instances of language» (idem: 724), and understanding, a higher
level of awareness that includes generalizations across instances, knowl-
edge of rules and metalinguistic awareness. His proposal is that noticing
is as necessary as understanding, or rather it is the primary stimulus for
Second Language Acquisition, both for explicit and implicit instruction
(Petroni, 2014).
4. Peer assessment
In the last two decades, research literature has explored a range of differ-
ent teaching, learning and assessment orientations and procedures. The
transfer-of-knowledge model has shifted to new models placing students
at the core of the learning experience (Anderson and North, 1991; Boud
and Falchikov, 2007; Falchikov, 2001; Falchikov and Goldnch, 2000).
Different theoretical and applicative theories have developed models for
the implementation of self-learning, self-assessment, peer monitoring,
peer pairing and peer assessment. They all go hand in hand with digital lit-
eracy skills and with the expanding notions of what learning and teaching
materials are, for example shifting from an almost total reliance on text-
books with “ready-made” activities and tasks with little or no meaningful
context to the gradual use of authentic materials and texts taken from the
Internet. Overall, literature provides evidence that contributions of peers
in learning contexts enhance the conceptual, emotive, intellectual, cogni-
tive and metacognitive development of their partners, encouraging stu-
dent-centred experiences of learning (Stiggins, 1994). Methods for peer
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learning range from cooperative learning (Johnson and Johnson, 1987)
to collaborative learning (Brown and Campione, 1994) and peer tutoring
(Cohen, Kulik and Kulik, 1982; Greenwood, 1997). These methods vary in
the application of peer learning, but they generally agree about its useful-
ness and positive effects in learning outcomes and educational success,
and general improved conditions of learning. However, as O’Donnell and
Topping claim (1998: 259), research literature on the use of peers for as-
sessment is “quite sparse”. To address the problems discussed in the previ-
ous sections, we have wondered why, if peer learning is commonly agreed
to have benecial results in class and outside class, a lamentable lack of
experimentation can be observed in the context of peer assessment, espe-
cially in terms of its formal inclusion in the syllabus and curriculum.
A central issue concerning the partial or total lack of experimentation on
peer assessment in educational contexts can be detected in a possible
misunderstanding of the distinction between formative and summative
peer assessment. The former deals with the process of learning and may
be better dened as peer monitoring, that is, helping the partner/s with
critical feedback and providing support in terms of in itinere group’s feed-
back. In other words, formative peer assessment is more concerned with
the process of learning: students thus have the opportunity to edit their
assignments before the nal and formal submission. Summative peer as-
sessment is instead concerned with the nal outcome, i.e. the product of
learning after a period of instruction. Summative peer assessment is typ-
ically designed as a way to grade peer work (e.g., essays, presentations)
and is typically measured against student’s performance and nal achieve-
ment. Conversely, summative peer assessment is not based on formal and
“objective” assessment (e.g., univocal answer cloze questions or correcting
grids), hence students may not feel ready to grade their peers or willing to
have their assignments graded by their peers.
To make the picture even more complex, teachers may be cagey about the
adoption of peer assessment, assuming their students’ lack of expertise,
training and other more covert issues, such as giving up their institutional
power and handing it down to students. A partial reversal of institution-
alized roles is perhaps what makes teachers (and curriculum planners) so
resistant to formalized summative peer assessment. Educational planners
in general are cagey about formalizing peer assessment, whereas self and
peer learning constitute a common ground of investigation and experi-
mentation, for example in language planning, and have been thoroughly
institutionalized at European level (see the European Language Portfolio).
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If students become evaluators, the traditional “good assessment” ingredi-
ents of reliability and validity may be hampered. Pond, Ul-Haq and Wade
(1995) listed many controversial issues, such as friendship grading (i.e. stu-
dents assigning high grades to peers because of friendship), collusive grading
(i.e. lack of differentiation between peers, especially frequent with high-
stake assessment tests/exams), decibel grading (i.e. students assigning the
highest grades to the most active peers). Other potential criticalities include
competitive environment, consequent misunderstanding on the role of peer
assessment, scarce or non-existent experience in peer assessment. All of
these issues could be countered by tasks and activities that make the pro-
cess and goals transparent for students, who, especially in undergraduate
and postgraduate university contexts, should also work on the development
of their critical skills when it comes to their learning (e.g., metalearning).
Experimentation needs to be carried out further, especially at university,
where students are required to improve their negotiating and evaluating
skills in English, particularly in the Humanities, for students interested in fu-
ture teaching careers. In Italy, many teachers complain about the poor quality
and virtual lack of practical teacher training at postgraduate level. Experimen-
tation and research into peer assessment within English and digital skills are
thus needed to enhance university students’ learning and metalearning expe-
rience and to equip them with practical tools to become assessors in (future)
real life educational contexts that, as discussed in the previous section, will
and should be more digitally equipped, and not only in technical terms.
Another crucial factor in designing the course is how to measure the suc-
cess of the experiment. The usual measurement of success in similar exper-
iments was the degree of agreement between teacher and student ratings
(Falchikov, 2001). However, as Falchikov (2001: 272) claims on the matter,
«agreement between student and teacher marks may not be the most im-
portant aspect of successful self- or peer assessment. Real success should
follow from the enhancement of student learning that results from par-
ticipation in the process». Measurement of success cannot be exclusively
measured against the agreement of grading between students and teach-
er, and for a number of reasons, such as the consideration that no grading
may be believed as a pure or neutral procedure. Teachers’ grading is more
subjective and evanescent than we, as teachers, are willing to admit, and
especially so when it comes to marking via complex and non-univocal cri-
teria (e.g., essays, presentations, oral exams). Another reason for the need
to expand our notion of success in peer assessment experimentation lies
in the ideological consideration that empowering students and fostering
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their reective skills with regard to the complex arena of English and digi-
tal skill in the context of assessment is very important.
5. MoM project as a prototype of a joint syllabus
Project overview
The MoM (Multimodality on the Move) research project aims at rethink-
ing the curriculum of the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign
Language within Degrees in Modern Languages, Media, Communication
and others, in the light of the contemporary role that English is playing at
global level in the changed digital media landscape. It builds on a pilot pro-
ject developed at the University of Messina in 2010 in a course of English
Linguistics for postgraduate students in which systemic-functional and
cross-cultural sociosemiotic approaches to multimodal studies were the
major focus of the syllabus (Sindoni, 2013).
English was the core of the syllabus and, more in detail, the project ex-
plores collaborative teaching and learning practices in academic contexts,
focusing on the ground-breaking role that multimodal studies are current-
ly playing in the (re)shaping of the elds of linguistics, communication and,
broadly speaking, the social sciences, especially in the analysis of digital
texts for cross-cultural communication.
Description of the method
MoM was developed within four universities in Italy, i.e. University of Chi-
eti-Pescara, University of Firenze, University of Messina, and University
of Roma “Tor Vergata”, in the academic year 2014-2015. Four different co-
horts of students were formed in the four academic contexts on a voluntary
basis. Students from English Language and Linguistics classes participated
in the project by joining a specic syllabus which was focused on the study
of multimodality and digital textuality, and specically on the creation, de-
sign, and study of four genres of digital texts, namely videochats (Maria
Grazia Sindoni, University of Messina), fanvids (Ilaria Moschini, Universi-
ty of Florence), blogs (Elisabetta Adami, University of Chieti-Pescara) and
“about us” webpages (Sandra Petroni, University of Rome, Tor Vergata)
and English was used as a Lingua Franca. The project involved the schedul-
ing of three workshops that each researcher organized and administered
in the other three universities. All workshops focused on the interpreta-
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tion of the four above mentioned digital text types in a cross-cultural per-
spective and students were invited to produce their own, motivating their
design and rhetorical choices. After attending the workshops, then, stu-
dents were asked to 1) produce their own texts, 2) write a short academic
paper discussing their linguistic and semiotic choices in text production,
and nally 3) evaluate one of their fellow students from another university
on a common peer-assessment grid.
The main goals were to dene standardized teaching, learning and assess-
ing procedures at a national level, experimenting on a common syllabus and
common assessment and peer-assessment procedures. Standardization was
made possible by exchanging researchers in praesentia and (peer-) assessors
in absentia (i.e. students) in different academic contexts in Italy. Multimodal-
ity was adopted as a general framework of analysis with a specic focus on
digital textualities. Assessment of the students’ learning outcomes had to
include evaluation of the digital texts produced and their related analyses,
as well as the work peer-assessed by students from the other universities.
Preliminary results
The data sets demonstrated the validity of the approach since the students
involved in the project increased their skills in 1) using English as a Lingua
Franca, and in 2) creating, analysing, evaluating digital texts which are ex-
tremely useful in international and cross-cultural communication. All this
thanks to the integration of English language, digital literacy and multimo-
dality, the creation of a common syllabus and the use of assessment and
peer assessment procedures.
These pivots pushed the students to 1) reect critically on their production,
distribution and evaluation of multimodal texts in English; 2) use metade-
scriptive terminology and analytical tools of contemporary textualities in
English, and 3) exploit critically the functionalities and affordances of dig-
ital technologies. Additionally, this format can be perfectly exportable to
European contexts, in tune with the envisaged cross-cultural dimension,
and customised according to the different learning needs and contexts.
6. Final remarks
Digital literacy and prociency in English for international communication
are essential requirements for graduates’ access to today’s European la-
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bour market. While the two are often held separate in higher education
curricula, there is a strong need to design courses that integrate abilities
for the creation and critical interpretation of multimodal digital texts in
English, such as blogs, websites, CVs, professional proles, corporate and
user-generated videos, and video-based interactions in connection with
the new requirements of the job market.
The theoretical studies here put forward suggest that there are plenty of
motivations for the adoption of a transdisciplinary approach to the study of
foreign/second languages in as much as language itself cannot exist isolat-
ed from the other nonverbal semiotic resources. Planning syllabi and cur-
ricula thus needs a transdisciplinary perspective, and this is what scholars,
teachers, students and any stakeholder involved in building knowledge are
trying to do in compliance with European demands.
However, it is not only Europe who claims this. In support of the Europe-
an Commission and in order to develop robust policies in Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) and higher education, UNESCO also
declares that the use of new learning technologies has opened up mean-
ingful possibilities for informal and continuing literacy learning in adult and
youth basic education programmes. ICT can enhance skills development,
stimulate use of learner-generated materials, strengthen awareness-rais-
ing and learner motivation, encourage and endorse the distribution and
updating of materials and information to resource centres and collect
feedback from individual and collective learners.
On a global scale, knowledge, education and training are moving towards
wide-scale innovations and higher education institutions have to cope
with this change by applying pedagogical policies aimed at providing all
potential learner with equal opportunities, inclusion, open access to learn-
ing and quality improvement,
ICT in higher educationis being used for developing course materi-
al; delivering content and sharing content; communication between
learners, teachers and the outside world; creation and delivery of
presentations and lectures; academic research; administrative sup-
port, student enrolment(UNESCO, 2016).2
ICT and digital skills can shape policies for education and their role is both
normative and informative, with information being widely available. Open
2 http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/lifelong-learning/higher-education/.
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Educational Resources (OER) offer a crucial chance to upgrade the quality
of education as well as promote policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and
capacity building.
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... The Framework is the result of data collected during common teaching and learning activities developed in three European countries (Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom), where English was used as the language for international communication in the different academic and cultural backgrounds of students participating in the project. The activities were part of a transnational joint syllabus (Petroni & Sindoni, 2017) and students were taught how to interpret and produce five digital text types (i.e. "about us" webpages, fanvids, promotional videos, blogs and video-mediated interactions). ...
Conference Paper
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... The Framework is the result of data collected during common teaching and learning activities developed in three European countries (Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom), where English was used as the language for international communication in the different academic and cultural backgrounds of students participating in the project. The activities were part of a transnational joint syllabus (Petroni & Sindoni, 2017) and students were taught how to interpret and produce five digital text types (i.e. "about us" webpages, fanvids, promotional videos, blogs and video-mediated interactions). ...
Conference Paper
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The paper presents some data and reflections from a survey, carried out by INDIRE, on 336 projects developed by the Italian schools that participated in the Triennial Plan of the Arts promoted by the Minis- try of Education (Decree 60/2017), which aimed at promoting humanistic culture, the enhancement of heritage knowledge, cultural productions and support for creativity. The research question that this work raises is: “how can civic and intercultural skills be conveyed through creative processes and in the teaching of the arts?”
... The framework has been developed drawing mainly on data produced during the teaching and learning activities carried out in the EU-MADE4LL project. 3 These activities were part of a transnational joint syllabus (Holliman and Scanlon 2006;Resta and La Ferrière 2007;Sindoni and Petroni 2017) implemented in five European university classes involving 214 students. After participating in a series of core sessions on multimodality and digital communication and five text-specific workshops, each student had to produce three assignments that correspond to three stages of learning development: (1) production of one digital text out of the five taught -namely, blog, web page, fanvid, promotional video, and video-mediated interactions -along with a transcription of the video/interaction, contextualization of the fanvid, or a mock-up of the blog/web page (learning to design and produce); (2) a written analysis of the meaning-making resources used in their digital texts in relation to their communicative purposes (learning to interpret and analyze); and (3) blind peer assessment of another student's production (learning to evaluate and assess). ...
... images, music, design of objects or buildings, body movements, gaze, social distance, etc.) in the analysis and interpretation of meaning-making processes. Much of the research in multimodality thus strived to get rid of rigid language-derived epistemologies, in the form of a plethora of other grammars, for example grammar of music and voice (van Leeuwen, 1999(van Leeuwen, , 2005, grammar of displayed art (O'Toole 1994(O'Toole [2011), grammar of the built environment (O'Toole, 2004), grammar of performing arts (Sindoni et al., 2017), etc. The new developed grammars had the ambition of unearthing new, possibly formerly ignored, kinds of data, and that was obviously not the case for language. ...
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Online and blended teaching has been implemented in many higher education institutions for several decades now. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many institutions to change their face-to-face and blended teaching into exclusively online teaching. This resulted in a more frequent and different use of tools and teaching genres (i.e., digital genres) that could eventually lead teachers to the exploration of different teaching approaches. Some research has already focused on digital genres and their characteristics. However, the pandemic has disclosed new practices and applications, which have received limited attention up to now. The aim of the present research is to find out the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on English language teaching concerning the use of multimodal digital genres and tools. English language lecturers in 18 countries were surveyed in April 2020, in the early stages of the pandemic, and then 1 year later, in April 2021. Their answers show that, although most institutions moved to online teaching, it was in the frame of ‘emergency remote teaching’, as there was no real change in methodology. Indeed, teachers reported having learnt and used new tools for their online teaching. Some of them also mentioned the pedagogical advantages and specificities of digital genres for online teaching. Yet, results from the present study show that such expansion of emergent technologies has not led teachers to a further reflection on their teaching practices and ultimately to the adoption of a different pedagogy.KeywordsEnglish language teachingOnline university teachingOnline genresMultimodal genresCOVID-19
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The paper reports the findings of an exploratory case study on a multimodal digital literacy (MDL) syllabus which was developed for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language in the context of the Integrated Foreign Languages Curriculum for a 5th grade class in a Greek primary school. The MDL syllabus was designed and implemented with the view to raising students’ awareness of multimodal meaning-making resources and their critical interpretation and understanding. The paper discusses the effects of the implementation of this task-based syllabus and the development of children’s multimodal literacy through the use of a variety of multimodal digital texts. This action research has used a mixed-method approach to derive findings. Specifically, it employs classroom observations, and especially designed tasks with open-ended items used at a pre- and a post- instruction stage together with a students’ survey. Overall, the paper intends to evaluate the effectiveness of the MDL syllabus and suggest activities of different multimodal teaching foci which aim at raising students’ multimodal literacy in digital environments.
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