EFL teachers professional learning needs: working with multimedia and the cloud

This chapter examines the current opportunities that are available for enhancing language learning through digital communication technologies in terms of multimedia and use of multimodal texts, and the potential for language learning through the CLOUD. Working with multimedia and the CLOUD are explored in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL), teachers’ professional learning needs, relevance to the principles of second language acquisition, changing demands on learners and the potential to improve languages pedagogy and learning outcomes in the current globalised world. It reports recent research into two samples of EFL teachers’ perceived professional learning needs and presents a series of three vignette’s that demonstrate how multimedia and the CLOUD are facilitating language teaching and learning. Through exploring a deep approach to multimedia language instruction it identifies those features that are most enabling of students’ language learning and the reasons why. It attempts to challenge both the teacher and the learner to reconceptualise the 21st century language learning space through its provision of insights into the benefits of the CLOUD in its potential to have a dramatic impact on creating language learning communities, developing intercultural literacy and supporting communicative interactions in English as a foreign language.