Girona, April 2016 MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATIONS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING EXPERIENCES Suárez Vilagran, Maria del Mar 1 Universitat de Barcelona, Spain mmsuarez@ub.edu Abstract This paper intends to analyze how freshman students of the Media Studies degree represent their relationship with English as a Foreign Language (EFL) through an image in a multimodal environment. The aim is twofold: first, to study how students take advantage of the multimodal potential of the Mahara e- portfolio and, second, to explore what their reflection on their EFL learning process is like when conveyed through image and text and the relationships established between these two media. Objectives The study conforms to the Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis framework, which analyzes the use of language and the interactive communication features among humans in electronic environments (Herring, 2000), including the construction of identity. In a formal environment, ICT tools have also affected the way digital literacy is approached in learning/teaching processes (Cassany, 2010). Communicating in digital environments involves hypertextuality, intertextuality and multimodality, so developing digital communicative competence should cover all these dimensions. Using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2001: 20) definition of multimodality, meaning is not build just as a series of elements presented in a linear, sequential way but conforming a multimodal syncretism in which there exist several simultaneous processes for meaning making. From this point of view, it is understood that the coherence of texts does not only lie in coherence in isolation but in relation with all the multimodal elements available interacting. Focusing on the multimodal dimension, language users do not only resort to written text but they also communicate using other semiotic modes that turn the electronic environment into a multimodal ensemble (Kress 2010: 81) in such a way that each mode develops its communicative and representational potential to generate global meanings. Consequently, in formal language learning contexts, multimodal discourse is increasingly cultivated (Jewit, 2009). Nöth (2001) proposes four aspects to describe the relationship between text and image. From a syntactic perspective, images can relate to texts in terms of time and space. From a semantic perspective, five relationships can be established between text and images, which are: 1) Complementarity: when both text and image are needed to grasp the meaning. 2) Dominance: the relevance of the image in relation to the text depending on the type of document they appear in. 3) Redundancy: when the message repeats what is already perceived in the image. 4) Discrepancy, and 5) Contradiction: when there is no logical relationship between the text and the image, whether intentionally or not. 1 M.Mar Suárez holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics, specializing in aptitude for foreign language learning. She currently occupies a postdoctoral position as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Education, where she teaches both in the Media Studies degree and in the Masters in Research in Language and Literature Didactics. Her current research revolves around individual differences in foreign language learning, multimodality environments for foreign language learning and gamification in education.