How do trained English-medium instruction (EMI) lecturers combine multimodal ensembles to engage their students?

Abstract

The growing global phenomenon of English-medium instruction (EMI) has led to the need for teacher training in higher education. Engagement and multimodality should lie at the heart of this EMI training. For the purpose of this study, we analyse the multimodal and interactive discourse in episodes of classroom engagement found within 8 mini-lessons given by participants of the University of Alicante EMI workshops. These video-recorded mini-lessons, extracted from the “AcqUA EMI microteaching corpus”, are used first to examine the verbal discourse, and then the multimodal discourse of the episodes of engagement. Findings from the verbal analysis reveal that the EMI trained lecturers make use of elicitations, questions and negotiation of meaning to engage their audiences. On the other hand, the multimodal analysis provides evidence of the varied use of semiotic resources (e.g. gaze, gesture, and written language). This orchestration of communicative modes constitutes multimodal ensembles that serve to foster engagement in the classroom. Consequently, these outcomes contribute to understanding how interaction is shaped in EMI discourse, and how this can be beneficial for both EMI teacher training courses and research.