Fei Victor Lim

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract

The future of TESOL must engage critically with the multimodal turn, acknowledging the shifting landscape of communication in a digital age where meaning-making extends beyond linguistic forms to encompass a range of semiotic resources, such as images, gestures, sounds, and spatial designs. This paper argues for a twofold agenda: augmenting English language learning with multimodality and broadening the scope of literacy education to include multimodal literacy. This involves leveraging multimodal resources not merely as supplementary tools but as integral components of language instruction, thereby enriching learners’ communicative competence in authentic and diverse contexts. The paper calls for a strategic and systemic response from the TESOL community, advocating for research-informed pedagogies, policy frameworks that recognize the importance of multimodal literacy, and targeted professional development for teachers.

Keywords

Multimodality, digital technology, semiotic modes, literacy, multiliteracies