Review of Instruction Giving in Online Language Lessons: A Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated technological advancements as well as a global shift to remote learning, thereby transforming online education for both teachers and students (Abdel Latif, 2022;Shin, 2020).This transition reshaped instructional dynamics and exposed challenges (e.g., disparities in digital tools and literacy, issues with classroom management), particularly for educators adapting from in-person to virtual classrooms.As online learning environments became the norm, new strategies and frameworks became essential to navigating the complexities of virtual teaching.In the monograph, Instruction Giving in Online Language Lessons: A Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis, Satar and Wigham (2023) build on their prior research (2020, 2021) and use a multimodal interaction analysis (MIA) approach (Norris, 2024) to examine how experienced language teachers conduct online lessons.Their study focuses on task repetition, learner group size, and three distinct task types.Their findings highlight the multimodal nature of online language instruction and the unique competencies required of educators, many not directly transferable from traditional to virtual classrooms.The book offers detailed micro-level analyses of instruction-giving practices in virtual settings, contributing valuable insights for applied linguists and language education scholars.It can also be used as a reflective resource by online language teachers who wish to become more aware of their verbal, non-verbal, and multimodal practices.In Chapter 1, Satar and Wigham lay the groundwork for addressing challenges in transferring teaching skills from in-person to online classrooms.Certain key concepts are defined, such as "semiotic lag," communication delays disrupting classroom dynamics, and "semiotic (mis)alignment," the disparities in tools and resources hindering communication and understanding (p.2).The authors emphasize the importance of multimodal communication (e.g., using gestures, gaze, text chat, and spoken language), and they outline four essential teaching competencies: (a) socio-affective, (b) pedagogical, (c) semiotic, and (d) technological.In addition, Satar and Wigham identify two critical research gaps: methodological gaps and contextual gaps.The first calls for improved tools to analyze teachers' online forms of communication, while the second highlights the limited research on how experienced language teachers adapt their methods to different tasks and students.The authors address these gaps by using the innovative MIA approach to investigate experienced teachers' online instruction-giving practices with individuals and groups of students, as well as through specific task types.