Elementary-level learners’ engagement with multimodal resources in two audio-visual genres

Abstract

ABSTRACTAudio-visual texts play a vital role in FL instruction. Numerous publications point to their benefits to reach communicative and cultural learning goals. However, there is only limited empirical insight into how the medium’s multimodal resources are used in the context of FL learning. To understand how elementary-level learners of German engage with the multimodal linguistic and cultural resources of audio-visual texts, this quantitative study investigated learners’ linguistic and cultural comprehension as well as their self-reported foci when watching two genres of short audio-visual texts. Results showed that, first, learners have less difficulty understanding action-driven audio-visual genres with embodied, interactional modes of communication that balance iconic, indexical and symbolic multimodal resources and, second, learners’ self-reported foci on multimodal aspects were broad and varied by genre. Pedagogical implications for the selection of and teaching with audio-visual media as well as directions for future research are discussed.