Beyond Written-Linguistic Modes of Meanings: Multimodal Representations to Extend the Range of Literacy Learning in EMI Students

Abstract

The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has meant a change from teacher-centered to student-centered education. Since the Bologna process, Spanish universities have promoted active methodologies, emotional intelligence in the classroom, assessment by competencies, and teaching in English. Thus, English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) courses have increased. This paper analyzes two EMI courses taught in Education degrees in a Spanish university, from the point of view of the teaching strategies that can ensure the content learning and the literacy development of mixed-language ability students through the systematic promotion of multimodal patterns of meaning. To do so, students’ multimodal texts resulted from four class tasks were analyzed using a framework of interpretive strategies to assess to what extent they represented the meaning of the academic readings they were based on. The results of the descriptive analysis suggest that the promotion of multimodal meanings in the EMI classroom can extend the range of literacy learning and favor not only the development of linguistic skills but also digital, social, and cognitive skills likely to improve students’ academic performance in the courses that they study in English. Moreover, this approach contributes to an improvement in students’ degree of motivation.