Teachers' Speech and Gestures in Primary EFL Classrooms Using Tablet Technologu: A Critical Multimodal Comparison of Pedagogic Discourse

Evidence of the benefits of portable computer technologies for children's learning has generated strong enthusiasm for their integration in schools, with the hope that this could address problems such as the paucity of foreign language teachers (e.g. OLPC, 2012; Western Australian Department of Education, 2013). Thailand's One Tablet Per Child (OTPC) project commenced in 2012 with the distribution of tablet PCs to Grade 1 students and the development of apps, and cost over 152 million US dollars in its first year alone (Ministry of Education, Thailand, 2013). The aim was to enable students 'to be equally nurtured with quality education by using Tablet PCs as an effective tool in their learning and accessing information of their interests' (Sririsaengtaksin et al., 2013, p. 150). This chapter extends current understanding of how one-to-one technologies are integrated in language teaching by comparing teachers' use of speech and gesture in two Grade 2 English primary-school classrooms in Thailand that incorporate tablet based instructional materials developed as part of Thailand's OTPC.