Using Multimodal Pedagogy to Teach Languages Online

Abstract

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 immediately exposed inequities among students and teachers in terms of technological access and pedagogical skill. Educators responded to this new reality by modifying their teaching and interactions with learners and by seeking opportunities for introspection, reflection, and transformation. The field of teacher education was also affected by the pandemic. This chapter presents the transformation of an in-school face-to-face pre-clinical language teaching and learning experience at the elementary school level into an innovative virtual hands-on online one-on-one language pre-clinical teaching and learning experience. It also includes how teacher candidates (TCs) participating in this program designed and taught highly engaging multimodal virtual lessons, the pros and cons of teaching in this type of setting, and the lessons learned though this experience.