Adopting a multimodal German as a foreign language (GFL) coursebook approach

Abstract

“Oh no … I forgot my textbook at home”. Experienced and novice teachers alike are familiar with such a statement. Students at times forget to bring with them in class what is frequently treated as the bread and butter of the daily teacher conduct. Textbooks indeed are the most popular tool used globally within the classroom (UNESCO, 2007). The Foreign Language (FL) classroom is no exception. In this case, textbooks together with other authentic texts (Widdowson, 1990) bring the learner closer to the target language being taught.

While acknowledging the importance of texts, this paper goes one step further and aims at analysing a number of German as a Foreign Language (GFL) texts multimodally. This will be done, initially by defining the terms ‘mode’ and ‘multimodality’, highlighting the conventional distinctions which often feature in literature, i.e., distinguishing between superordinate – subordinate modes as well as embodied – disembodied modes. Adopting a practical multimodal text analysis, the paper then moves on to analyse whether particular GFL texts are indeed multimodal, a question rarely tackled by literature.