Accounting for multimodality in an EFL textbook: analysing activities and suggesting ways to approach multimodal texts

Abstract

Contributing to the discussion studies that refer to approaching multimodal texts in the EFL classroom have raised, this paper focuses on the exploration of the issue specifically related to the use of EFL textbooks. A brief overview of some of the main relevant literature is presented, followed by an analysis of some excerpts of an EFL textbook. One of the concerns in this paper is to reinforce the view that EFL learners need to be able to effectively deal with multimodal texts and that EFL teachers thus must be prepared to help their students with such a task. Adding to that view, a more specific matter here is to emphasise that departing from the work with multimodal texts inserted in the textbooks, available to use in the EFL classroom can be of great help in that endeavour. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) framework for the analysis of images and visual compositions is referred to in the analysis presented in this paper.