Multimodal engagement-oriented metadiscourse in lead-in interactions: evidence from Chinese EFL classrooms

This study investigates how engagement-oriented metadiscourse, operationalised through engagement markers, shapes lead-in interactions in Chinese EFL classrooms. Although metadiscourse has been widely recognised as central to teacher-student engagement, existing research has largely treated it as a linguistic phenomenon, leaving its multimodal realisation underexplored – particularly with respect to engagement markers during lesson lead-ins, where participation frameworks and interactional trajectories are first established. Drawing on Multimodal Interaction Analysis (MIA), this study analyses video-recorded EFL lessons to examine how teachers deploy engagement markers across verbal and non-verbal modes to structure interaction and stimulate learner involvement. The findings reveal two distinct lead-in orientations – deductive and inductive – each associated with different configurations of engagement and multimodal metadiscursive emphasis. The interactional effectiveness of engagement markers – understood in terms of teachers’ ability to foreground engagement and structure participation through coordinated multimodal resources – was further mediated by teacher – student familiarity. By foregrounding the attentional and embodied dimensions of engagement markers, this study contributes to research on multimodal classroom interaction by demonstrating how engagement is dynamically orchestrated through action, rather than linguistically encoded alone. Pedagogically, the findings underscore the value of preparing teachers to design lead-ins as multimodal, interactionally consequential events, offering implications for EFL teacher education and classroom practice in diverse instructional contexts.