Innovation in Language Learning

This research-action project leads to the development of a dialogical and multimodal approach to lexical instruction (www.uqac.ca/crl). This approach is based on dialogical inquiry approach, and is rooted in the philosophy that active listening activities and discussion foster children’s negotiation and co-construction of the meaning of words. The approach is also multimodal, in that it involves multimodalities (text, tactile, visual, audio) and the use of digital technologies, the tablets. Data collection involved digital ethnographic observations of 64 students in 4 classrooms, and 2 semi-structured interviews with teachers over a period of 6 months in a multilingual school setting in Montreal, Canada. The study addressed the following question: How can the use of the electronic tablets promote vocabulary learning among young learners? The results present the limits and the potential of the dialogical and multimodal approach to lexical instruction in elementary classrooms, and its effect on the development of metacognitive strategies among young learners in learning vocabulary. The results show the potential of the tablets for oral communication in classroom with multilingual learners.

Keywords: Vocabulary teaching; mobile technology; dialogical approach;