Learners’ Multimodal Identities Construction In Online Telecollaborative Interaction Research Wednesday, November 14th Start Time: 15:45 End Time: 16:15 Auditorio 106, Facultad de Ingeniería Hsin-I Chen National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan hsinichen20@gmail.com ABSTRACT In recent years, with the availability of online communication technologies, more telecollaborative tasks are integrated in language classrooms, bringing together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations to develope learners’ linguistic and intercultural competence through collaborative work (O’Dowd & Lewis, 2016; Vinagre, 2017). While telecollaboration shows great potential for language learning, more looked into the effect of telecollaboration for learners’ linguistic and intercultural competence. There is a lack of research investigating how L2 learners construct identity/-ies in telecollaborative interaction, especially when learners are engaged in synchronous, video-based exchanges with other English-as-an-international-language (EIL) interlocutors. As language learning is a continuous process of identity (re)creation (Norton, 1997), it is thus important to explore how L2 learners communicate their ‘sense of selves’ and construct own identities in online telecollaborative communities of practice. This study explores the online videoconferencing interaction between 16 Taiwanese students and 16 American students in a 6-week US-Taiwan telecollaboration project using Google Hangouts. Informed by the social semiotic perspective of multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and identities-in-practice (Lave, 1996; Kanno & Norton, 2011; Wenger, 1998), this study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach and a multimodal analysis to gain in-depth understanding of how five L2 learners construct identities using multimodal resources in telecollaborative videoconferencing interactions. The analyses of digitally-recorded video conversations, semi-structured interviews, learner journals, and observation notes show that L2 learners utilized multimodal and semiotic resources, including verbal (e.g., spoken, textual texts) and non-verbal resources (e.g., eye gaze, gesture, body position) in representing meanings, constructing identities, and positioning themselves in relation to other EIL interlocutors in online multimodal interactions. Additionally, L2 learners were shown to shuttle across those different modalities to initiate or respond as a means for constructing who they are online. This study calls for a need for a multimodal perspective on telecollaboration studies and CALL research that examine not only how the verbal mode is produced and perceived by L2 learners but also how the non-verbal modes such as gestures and body languages that shape learners’ L2 identities-in-practice in online telecollaborative discourse.
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