This paper outlines the general influence of Halliday's (1994, 2014) systemic functional linguistics on TESOL curriculum. Halliday's explanation of language as a social semiotic and language learning as learning to mean has been applied internationally in genre and textbased teaching. The concept of register in systemic functional linguistics…

Looking at human communication from the perspective of semiotics extends our view beyond verbal language to consider other sign systems and meaning-making resources. Those include gestures, body language, images, and sounds. From this perspective, the communicative process expands from individual mental processes of verbalizing to include features…

We live in the age of globalization where diverse cultures and nations mix and mingle. A lot of us live in a multicultural society in which macro- and microethnoses coexist. Cultures enrich each other, collaborate…and sometimes clash. Misunderstandings happen when people speak the same language, but do not share the same cultural codes. Edward…

In recent years, research in multimodality has established the benefits of using multiple semiotic modes like image, sound, and text in digital second language (L2) communication. However, researchers have yet to investigate how L2 learners make meaning through embodied modes--or gestures and facial expressions. Grounded in the social semiotic…

Purpose: The paper reports how lesson study helped to make the learning of students with limited English competencies visible in "Content and Language Integrated Learning" (CLIL). Design/methodology/approach: The two lesson study cycles took place in a Swiss primary school with a focus on three case pupils each with heterogeneous…

Semiotics has been investigated in the literature to enhance second language vocabulary acquisition. The previous studies have examined how semiotics could aid second language (L2) learner to learn concrete words. This study aims at investigating the effect of semiotics on learning abstract words. Fifty-five Arab learners of English as a foreign…

This study, conducted in a 300-level college French class with 15 students, builds on previous research on symbolic competence (Kramsch, 2009, 2011). Using a film scene and a "Semiotic Gap Activity," we examine how students construct meaning. What do students prioritize? What do they bring from their past symbolic representations? Are…

Previous research on classroom interaction in international university contexts tended to focus on individual speakers' language (in)competence. This paper adopts a translanguaging and spatial orientation to intercultural classroom interaction and highlights the role of situated assemblages of linguistic, semiotic and multimodal resources embedded…

There is a need to gain insight into the ways technology positively impacts the literacy development of young children learning English as a new language given public scrutiny about the use of technology in early childhood classrooms. When thinking about the future, being multiliterate is important and requires learners to make, remake, and…

This chapter explores how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) can contribute to secondary teachers' effectiveness for teaching disciplinary literacies to refugee youth in the United States. The chapter describes the Milltown Multimodal/Multiliteracies (MMM) Collaborative, an SFL-based professional development partnership between a large public…

The paper reviews 25 years of experiences with video feedback. Video allows for "situated research," referring to lived experience for the purpose of understanding and reflection. Video has thus freed research from an exclusively laboratory-based approach and broadened its scope to include self-viewing and other-viewing in reflective groups. Video…

This reflection paper attempts to show how we foreign language (FL) teachers can help our students develop their visual literacy concerning the use of grammar charts to help them to make better sense of the grammar information presented in their textbooks. In the first part, this reflection overviews the concept of visual literacy (VL), its…

This study aims to investigate the role of mediation in the learning process from a sociocultural perspective, activity theory in particular. This study was carried out in a primary English immersion school within the CCUEI Programs in Mainland China. Data were collected mainly through observations and interviews, which were then supplemented by…