Multimodal meaning-making in student presentations: the impact of explicit feedback in a German as a foreign language classroom

Abstract

Abstract This study examines the impact of teacher feedback on seven students’ presentations on social and cultural topics held in a German-as-a-foreign language classroom in Japan. Following the submission of self-recorded presentation drafts on an online learning platform, students received explicit feedback on how their spoken commentary related to the visible information on slides derived from the theoretical insights of social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics. After allocating one class to revising their work, students presented their finalized presentations, which were video recorded, cut, and prepared for analysis. Subsequently, a total of 14 sections that underwent alterations in both the draft and in-class presentation were scrutinized following a qualitative multimodal discourse analytical framework. By demonstrating the differences between two students’ early drafts and their final in-class presentations, this study shows how adding verbal language that extended a slide’s content strengthened audience engagement through interpersonal functions in language, gaze, body orientation, and gesture. Further, restructuring and inserting additional entities on the PowerPoint slide helped emphasize the talk’s ideational components. The findings of this study have implications for multiliteracies pedagogy in a foreign language context, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach that considers language and other modes as complementary aspects of communication.