Functional diversity, listening skills and multimodality

What is it about?

Genuine instances of communication are multimodal in nature. Thus, important aspects of effective communication such as gestures, facial expression, visual context, or interpersonal distance, are usually present in listening events and participate in the communicative act, creating a given multimodal message (Jewitt 2009). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) places an important and active role for listening skills within the communicative activities that language learners need to develop. A number of situations are described in the framework, including understanding interaction between native speakers, listening as a member of a live audience, listening to announcements and instructions, listening to radio and audio recordings and watching TV, film and video. However, this framework will not be complete until we consider the principles of Universal Design where all students are included (cf. Orkwis & McLane 1999) and work towards making learning goals possible for diverse students (Cook and Rao 2018). This article defines the listening construct from a multimodal perspective so that different abilities needed to understand and work with a variety of communicative modes are taken into account as part of the listening construct definition (Bateman, Wildfeuer, & Hiippala 2017; Campoy-Cubillo & QuerolJulián 2015; Kendon 2004; Rost 1991, 2011; Rost and Candlin 2014). This implies considering how the definition of the multimodal listening construct takes into account students with special needs and their perception and understanding of the different modes as part of the listening construct. Keywords: multimodal listening; universal design; foreign language learning; students with special needs; functional diversity

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Why is it important?

Relates functional diversity to language learning skills. Relates functional diversity to communicative modes. Relates multimodality to functional diversity.