Christopher Smith

After Renaissance Studies in OCADU’s Florence (Italy) program, followed by 18 years of secondary and university EFL instruction in Korea, I returned to Canada and joined SLaLS in 2015. I received a Master’s degree from UNE (2014), but wanted to upgrade some courses to prepare for the SLaLS PhD program in 2016. I combined two channels of academic experience in visual communication (OCADU) and decades of English language instruction overseas and focused my research on the multimodal discourses in globally published EFL textbooks. My dissertation not only focused on a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a popular EFL textbook publication, but looked at how the content was negotiated between students and instructors during class and how they valued the lessons in coded interviews. The triangulated approach proved successful and I’ve signed a contract with Bloomsbury Publishing (academic) for my re-structured monograph, entitled “Understanding Multimodal Discourses in English Language Learning Textbooks: Implications for Students and Practitioners”, scheduled for publication and distribution in January, 2022. Currently, I live behind a laptop working on several publications that investigate multimodal discourse in English language learning contexts and teach TESOL stream courses with the Faculty of Education at Western University, in addition to undergraduate courses with SLaLS and “Approaches to Discourse Analysis” with St. Mary’s University, Halifax.

Area(s) of Interest

• Multimodality
• Critical Discourse Studies
• Critical Pedagogy in Language Learning