Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rill20

PowerPoint as a multimodal retelling tool:

students’ slide design, collaboration, and goal-
setting

Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

To cite this article: Cheryl Wei-yu Chen (2021): PowerPoint as a multimodal retelling tool:
students’ slide design, collaboration, and goal-setting, Innovation in Language Learning and
Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/17501229.2021.1895801

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2021.1895801

Published online: 08 Mar 2021.

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INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING
https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2021.1895801

PowerPoint as a multimodal retelling tool: students’ slide design,

collaboration, and goal-setting
Cheryl Wei-yu Chen
Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Taipei University of Business, Taipei City, Taiwan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This study engaged a group of Taiwanese English-as-a-Foreign-Language Received 15 June 2020
(EFL) adolescent learners as multimodal composers who used PPT slides Accepted 22 February 2021
to retell important elements of Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda
KEYWORDS
(1988). A total of 158 slides were made by 9 groups of students, and a Powerpoint; retelling;
detailed analysis of the slides revealed that text was often accompanied multimodal composing; slide
by visual design and gestural design. The end-of-semester group design; learner collaboration;
interviews indicated that 8 out of 9 groups followed a composing in goal setting
pieces model to finish their group slideshows. Only one group of
students met in person to decide together what to put on each slide.
Completing the PPT slides and presenting on stage propelled students
to set various learning goals, ranging from practicing voice projection
to managing time better. A few pedagogical implications and future
research directions are offered to conclude the article.

The ubiquitous software PowerPoint (PPT) has become an important part of daily communication in
professional and academic settings (Djonov and Van Leeuwen 2013; Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven
2014). Studies across disciplines have investigated the effectiveness of integrating PPT slides into
daily teaching (Garrett 2016; Ponce et al. 2018). The ubiquity of PPT in educational settings means
that it is not just the instructors who are making PPT slides – students are also making them to
fulfill course requirement. PPT is now seen as a complex multimodal meaning-making practice
(Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven 2014). Compared to studies done to investigate the effectiveness
of instructor-made PPT slides, research on students’ multimodal composing experience of making
PPT slides is rather scarce. This void has somewhat been filled by Smith and her associates’ research
in American grade schools (Dalton et al. 2015; Pacheco and Smith 2015; Smith 2017; 2018; 2019).
Their years of effort has helped to foreground PPT as an important meaning-making tool for students
to express their voices and personal understanding of course materials. The current study intends to
continue this line of research.
In this study, a group of Taiwanese English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) adolescent learners took
the role of multimodal writers to compose PPT slides to retell the essential story grammar elements
(Bender and Larkin 2009; Hagood 1997) of Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda (1988). Following
Dalton and her associates’ (2014) design, a researcher-developed PPT template was provided to
scaffold students on the digital retelling task. The guiding research questions were:
How did students design their PowerPoint slides to complete the retelling task?

(1) How did students collaborate with their group members to finish the slides?
(2) What learning goals did students set for themselves upon the completion of the retelling task?

CONTACT Cheryl Wei-yu Chen wychen66@gmail.com Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Taipei
University of Business, No. 321 Sec. 1, Jinan Rd., Zhongzheng District, Taipei City 100, Taiwan
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. W. CHEN

The first research question focused on students’ uses of different modes to design their PPT slides
while the second question looked into how each group collaborated to finish the slides. The third
question probed into how the making of PPT slides and presenting on the stage (Zhao, Djonov,
and Van Leeuven 2014) encouraged students to set learning goals for their future learning.

Literature review
A social semiotics view to digital multimodal composing (DMC)
The current study positioned PPT as a digital multimodal composing tool. Jiang (2018) defines digital
multimodal composing (DMC) as ‘a semiotic process that involves the use of digital tools to produce
texts by combining multiple modes, which include but are not limited to word, image, and sound-
track’ (60; see also Hafner 2015; Jiang 2017). DMC has its roots in the social semiotics view (Kress
2010) which emphasizes all meaning making is multimodal. Central to this theory of social semiotics
is that each mode, including linguistic, visual, gestural, auditory, and spatial (Hung, Chiu, and Yeh
2013; Smith 2018), works together with other modes to create a new message – the whole is
more than the sum of its parts (Ajayi 2009). Each mode also carries affordances and constraints.
For example, a graphic may better explain the anatomy of a human organ than a written text
(Dalton et al. 2015). Writers of the twenty-first century must do more than learn to use composing
tools. Rather, they must ‘evaluate, validate, contest, and create new meaning by taking advantage of
the unique affordances of digital tools for representation and dissemination’ (Jocius 2018, 15).
Fraiberg (2010) uses the lamination process to describe how modes are laminated or layered
together to make a finished writing product – modes work together in different ways to ‘create mul-
tilayered, communication ensembles’ (Stein 2008, 871). Research on students’ efforts of shifting
across semiotic boundaries has also found that transforming a written text into a multimodal artifact
generates a deeper understanding of the original written text (Zhang and O’Halloran 2019). The job
of multimodal composers is to ‘orchestrate meaning through their selection and configuration of
modes’ (Jewitt 2009, 15). Whether students can make the best use of the intersemiotic attributes
of linguistic and non-linguistic modes to generate meaning is an issue which deserves more inves-
tigations. Because both literary practices and technologies are fast evolving, Leu and his associates
(2004) conceptualize multimodal composing as a moving horizon. Although multimodal composing
is constantly changing, Dalton and her associates (2014) contend that ongoing theory- and practice-
building is needed to address how new ways of composing are done in specific sociocultural set-
tings. The current study attempts to answer such a call by examining how groups of Taiwanese ado-
lescent EFL learners used PPT as a multimodal retelling tool.

PPT as a DMC tool

When composing a PPT slideshow, users can choose from the resources available within the PPT soft-
ware (e.g. texture, font types and sizes, layout, and sound effect) while also incorporating other
semiotic artifacts (e.g. image, videos, and sound clips) allowed by the software (Zhao, Djonov, and
Van Leeuven 2014). The composition of PPT slideshows represent a form of ‘new writing’ (Van
Leeuwen 2008, 130), or writing that relies on the interactions of multimodal resources, rather on
verbal modes alone, to generate cohesion and coherence (Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven 2014).
Based on these features, PPT is a type of DMC tool.
PPT and other slideshow tools are a common scene on school computers, but relevant research is
rather scant (Dalton et al. 2015). A review of the field reveals that there are three major strands in the
research of PPT. The first strand is typically led by social semioticians who focus on investigating how
different modes are used as semiotic resources in PPT slides (Djonov and Van Leeuwen 2013; Kress
and Van Leeuwen 2002; Van Leeuwen, Djonov, and O’Halloran 2013; Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven
2014). In these studies, the layout and contents of PPT slides are studied to understand how meaning
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 3

making is achieved. The second strand of research focuses on the use of instructor-made slides
across disciplines and their effectiveness (Garrett 2016; Gordani and Khajavi 2020; İnceçay and
Koçoğlu 2017; Ponce et al. 2018). In EFL settings, for example, Gordani and Khajavi (2020) found
that to have a positive effect on EFL students’ content knowledge attainment and retention over
time, the PPT slides must be made with great care to cover the key terms and issues. In spite of
PPT’s ubiquity in language classrooms, İnceçay and Koçoğlu (2017) found that providing a PPT pres-
entation does not necessarily add English learners’ listening comprehension because such provision
seemed to create more confusion to the learners who were used to the audio mode alone when they
tried to complete listening comprehension tasks.
It should be noted that the ubiquity of PPT as a communication medium is disheartening for its
critics. Tuftee (2006) criticized the trillion of PPT slides made each year as providing ineffective dis-
plays and inadequate verbal and spatial reasoning. While there are certainly cases of misusing PPT,
Dalton and her associates (2014) suggest that we should view each digital tool in light of whether it
can accomplish the communication goals, and in relation to the writers’ needs and skills. Indeed, this
insight forms the backdrop of the third strand of research – student-made PPT slides.
In the series of studies conducted by Smith and her associates ((Dalton et al. 2015; Pacheco and
Smith 2015; Smith 2017; 2018; 2019), PPT formed either the central or one of the multimodal projects
students had to complete, and both the products and processes of making the slides have been
investigated. One of these studies – Dalton et al. 2015 – was particularly inspiring for the current
study. In this study, PPT was used as a composing tool for students to retell the anchor text’s
story grammar elements. The design of PPT offered structural support and prepackaged resources
for retelling the important elements of a story (Dalton et al. 2015). To further guide the 5th
graders’ digital retelling, the researchers made a PPT story frame to visually structure the retelling
task. The learners were encouraged to be creative by using ‘words, images, sound, and color to
tell a great tale’ (Dalton et al. 2015, 553). In the PPT frame, an ‘Add sound’ slide highlighted how
to record narration and add sounds, followed by a slide demonstrating the effects of colors. It
was found that writing and visual design were used by all the students, while 80% used animation
and 70% included sound. The findings suggest that even students retold the story within a
scaffolded PPT story frame, they were able to use the different composing modes in their slides
to express their creativity and understandings of the story.
Students’ frequent uses of animation and sounds reported by Dalton and her associates (2014)
should be interpreted with cautions. As mentioned earlier, the PPT frame included two slides
explaining the effects of sounds and colors (Dalton et al. 2015) and explicitly prompted students
to make use of them in their PPT slides. Also, the fifth graders read an e-text version of the folktale
developed by the researchers. The e-text was supported by many add-on features such as hyper-
linked vocabulary glossary, text-to-speech read-aloud function, and human voice narration. There
was even an avatar coach to demonstrate reading comprehension strategies to students. These
embedded functions might have inevitably impacted the ways that the participants designed
their PPT slides.
The current study continued Dalton and her associates’ (2014) use of PPT as a digital multimodal
composing tool to retell important elements of the anchor text Matilda. This retelling task also
engaged students to write text for selected illustrations from the novel. To conclude their PPT slide-
shows, each group of students had to select three favorite quotes from the novel and explain why
they liked the quotes. Unlike the participants in Dalton et al.’s (2015) study, students of the current
study read a traditional paper version of the anchor text and were given a rather simple PPT template
to structure their retelling (see later).

Students’ collaboration of making PPT slides

Lauer (2009) contends that as writing becomes an increasingly screen-based activity, the notion of
the author ‘as a single, solitary voice communicating to his or her audience through the finished
4 C. W. CHEN

product of the book’ (227) has become obsolete. Writer collaboration is now seen as an important
component of DMC (Jocius 2018). Strides have been made in uncovering the benefits of collabora-
tive DMC, such as learning new technical skills from peers (Dalton 2014) and engaging in new types
of social interaction (Rowe 2013). Some obstacles of composing together in the digital form have
also been identified (Jocius 2018; Smith 2017). In Smith’s (2017), it was found that some student
pairs distributed their work more evenly than others and took turns to compose. Jocius (2018)
further proposed that the focal pair in her study followed a composing in pieces model where the
group project was divided into manageable chunks. In other words, students’ collaboration was
driven by efficiency; the timely completion of a project was put at the forefront, instead of creativity
and innovation. Jocius (2018) argues that students’ focus on completing the project in a timely
fashion is understandable, but what Wohlwend (2015) describes as an ‘aimless and chaotic’ compos-
ing process involving ‘many hands all busy dragging, resizing, and animating’ and ‘many voices
making sound effects, narrating, directing, and objecting’ (157) will truly breed multiple perspectives
during the collaboration process.
Previous studies on students’ collaboration of making PPT slides have mainly reported findings
from one (Jocius 2018) or a few (e.g. Smith 2017; 2018) focal pairs. In many public schools in Asia,
large class sizes, with divergent motivation and English proficiency levels, is the norm. While the
aforementioned studies focusing on student pairs have delineated the nuances of how students col-
laborated together to complete their PPT projects, the current study was situated in a class with 50
students. Because students also needed to orally present their PPT products in class, arranging them
into small groups was a more sensible decision. Data from this study will also provide more insights
into how students collaborated in larger groups. In fact, in the real world, collaborating with more
than one person to complete a task may be the norm.

Setting learning goals

Zimmerman (2008) contends, ‘We are, in a very real sense, defined by the goals we set for ourselves’
(267). A goal is ‘the object or aim of an object, for example, to attain a specific standard of proficiency,
usually within a specified time limit’ (Locke and Latham 2002, 705). Setting learning goals is an essen-
tial part of any learning process, as conscious goals will affect actions (Locke and Latham 2002).
Writing in the context of teaching second-language listening with a metacognitive approach, Van-
dergrift and Goh (2012) contended that reflecting on the learning process and then setting appro-
priate goals for future improvement were an essential part of improving one’s listening abilities.
Goal-setting is particularly important in the digital age, as students of the twenty-first century
often need to multitask and find their ways to make the best use of the sea of information and
resources available in the digital age.
Encouraging students to set learning goals after their PPT project was an integral part of the
current study. As mentioned earlier, there were two parts in the PPT group project: group
members had to follow the researcher-developed PPT template to design three parts of their
retelling task (i.e. story grammar elements, text for predetermined illustrations, and favorite
quotes) and then presented their slides in front of the whole class. From their years of research,
Locke and Latham (2019) concluded that the most effective goals for improving performance are
those which are specific and difficult. If a goal is specific but too easy to attain, it will not help to
improve one’s performance; those ‘do-you-best’ goals (Locke and Latham 2019, 97) are not ideal
because they are too subjective and therefore not conducive to one’s development. Since
making PPT slides and presenting them on the stage are a common occurrence in modern-
day classrooms, instructors should use the completion of the PPT project as an opportunity to
guide students to reflect on their success (or failure) and set future learning goals. The
current study attempted to investigate the goals that students set for themselves after complet-
ing a PPT project.
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 5

Research methodology
The classroom context and participants
The 50 participants (39 females and 11 males with an average age of 14 years old) came from an
intact EFL integrated-skills course in Taiwan. This study took place in the second semester of stu-
dents’ first year of studying in a five-year English-major junior college program in Taiwan. Each aca-
demic semester lasted for 18 weeks, and the class met for three hours every week. The first semester
focused on reviewing essential English grammar and writing short paragraphs while the second
semester was designed around Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda. Judging from students’ self-
reported scores of standardized English tests and their performance in the course, their English profi-
ciencies levels ranged from B1 to C1 in the CEFR. I was their teacher for the course. An informed
consent form was signed by each student.

The anchor text Matilda and the PPT template

In the second semester of the course, the class read Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda (1988). While
some chapters were read together in class, others were assigned as materials for self-reading. In
Week 15, students formed groups of five to six students to engage in digital retelling of the story
and presented their PPT slides in Week 16; a total of 9 groups were formed. To enrich students’ multi-
modal learning experience, the 1996 movie and YouTube clips of the London West End’s musical,
both based on the book, were shown in class in Weeks 14 and 15.
To orient students towards the task, a PPT template, consisting of a total 16 slides, was prepared
by the teacher-researcher, and it included three parts: (1) providing story grammar elements (setting,
characters, problem[s], events, solution[s], and feelings); (2) writing texts for four instructor-selected
illustrations from the novel; and (3) selecting three favorite quotes and explaining why (see Appen-
dix A for the text version of the template). In the debriefing session in Week 15, students were told
their group PPT should not exceed a total of 20 slides, including the title, content, and closing slides.
They were also told that they were free to use any mode, including colors, words, images, sounds,
and animation, to compose their slides. However, unlike Dalton and her associates (2014), no empha-
sis was placed on any mode in the debriefing session.

Data collection and analysis

A total of 158 slides were collected from nine groups (15, 16, 16, 18, 18, 17, 17, 21, and 20 slides
respectively). Each slide was treated as a ‘semiotic artefact’ (Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven 2014,
355) which may make use of multiple semiotic modes. To answer the first research question, each
slide was inspected for the modes that were employed. In Week 17, a questionnaire (Appendix B)
was answered by each student, followed by a group interview conducted with each of the nine
groups. In each retrospective group interview, the PPT slides made by the group were shown on
the teacher-researcher’s computer screen, and questions like ‘Why did you choose this illustration?’
or ‘Why did you use this background’ were asked. The researcher also used this opportunity to
further clarify the participants’ comments on the questionnaires by asking questions like, ‘When
you wrote … , did you mean … ?’ Each audio-recorded interview lasted between 12–15 min, and
a trained research assistant later transcribed each recording.
In Dalton et al.’s (2015) study, the number of students was the base of the calculation to deter-
mine how many students used a mode, so their study yielded results like ‘80% of students used ani-
mation in their slides.’ In this study, the emphasis was on how each PPT slide was designed. Five of
the 9 groups (Groups 2, 3, 4, 7, & 8) chose to use commercial PPT template design. Because all of
these templates were colored by default, the 88 slides would be separated from the other 70
slides which did not use commercial PPT template design when calculating the modes that were
6 C. W. CHEN

used in each slide. Separating the slides into two major pools should yield a more accurate calcu-
lation of the use of colored background as a type of visual design. It should be noted that the
use of varied font sizes was not counted. Other than the 9 closing slides which contained a one-
line thank-you message, all the other slides featured some changes of font in one single slide.
Also, in Dalton et al.’s (2015) study, resizing or moving original graphics was counted as instances
of visual design. In this study, four small book illustrations were provided (Slides 9–12 in Appendix
A) for students to explain what the illustrations were about. To make their slides clear, it is not sur-
prising that students had to enlarge them and/or move them around. Nevertheless, these instances
were not counted as instances of visual design.
Thomas’s (2006) inductive approach for analyzing qualitative data was adopted to yield insights
to the second and third research questions. This approach involves the following steps. First, raw
data files are prepared, and a close reading of the data begins; in this case, the raw data consisted
of students’ PPT slides, questionnaires, and transcripts of group interviews. The close reading ends
once the researcher becomes familiar with the contents and gains a sufficient understanding of the
themes covered in the data. Next, Thomas (2006) advises researchers generate upper-level cat-
egories according to the research questions and lower-level ones from multiple readings of the
raw data. In this approach, it is common that some data may receive overlapping coding, while
other data may be left uncoded. The researcher should look for contradictory viewpoints and new
insights in the data analysis process. Appropriate quotes should be selected to illustrate a specific
theme. As the researcher-instructor of the current study, researcher subjectivity was avoided by fol-
lowing the above guidelines outlined by Thomas (2006). Whenever problems arose during the
coding process, I also reached the participants for their clarification.

Results
Research question #1: designing PPT slides
As mentioned earlier, the multimodal design elements of PPT slides can be categorized into linguistic
design, visual design, gestural design, auditory design, and spatial design (Hung, Chiu, and Yeh
2013). A careful inspection of all the slides revealed that besides linguistic design (i.e. text) and
spatial design (i.e. text alignment and margins) which were present in almost every slide, the two
major categories used by students were visual design and gestural design. In the category of
visual design, six types of image were used: colored book illustrations, black-and-white book illus-
trations, colored movie images, colored book covers, colored book images used as slide background,
and caption boxes. The first four categories were used as side-illustrations for text, while the fifth one
was used as slide background; these five types were all retrieved from the Internet. In the category of
gestural design, there were two types of animation: between-slide transition (the graphical effect
while moving from one slide to another) and slide animation or within-slide transition (the animation
given to the various objects inside the slide itself).
As mentioned earlier, the nine group PPT slideshows were further sorted according to whether a
commercial template design was used. Groups 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 used colored commercial templates to
design a total of 88 slides. It should be noted that 2 of the slides made by Group 2 (Slides 2–14 & 2-

Table 1. Use of modes with default colored backgrounds (number of slides = 86)
Types of slides Number of slides
1. Text only 26
2. Text + (within) slide animation 12
3. Text + colored illustrations 15
4. Text + black-and-white illustrations 16
5. Text + black-and-white illustrations + (within) slide animation 15
6. Text + black-and-white illustrations + caption boxes 2
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 7

15) featured a plain white background. Table 1 describes the use of modes in the remaining 86 slides
with default colored backgrounds.
Among these five groups, Group 4’s use of commercial templates deserves some discussion. The
PPT slideshow featured a refreshing use of different watercolors as backgrounds. Also, three major
color tones were used to signal separation of the three major sections of the retelling task (story
grammar, text for illustration, and favorite quotes). Unlike the other four groups which also
adopted commercial templates, Group 4’s choice of different watercolor backgrounds was eye-
opening for the other students in the class. The principal designer, Monica (pseudonym), remarked
in the group interview, ‘I looked for different watercolor designs on the Internet and selected three
major color tones for the three parts of the assignment.’
The remaining 70 slides were made by Groups 1, 5, 6, and 9, without using a commercial template
design. Twenty of these 70 slides adopted a completely white background, and they used the follow-
ing modes (Table 2):
As can be seen in Table 2, there were three slides (Slides 1-12, 1–13 & 1-14) which featured only
text. As mentioned earlier, Group 2 which chose a commercial template for their slideshow also
decided to use a completely white background for two of their slides (Slides 2–14 & 2-15). These
five slides were all designed for sharing students’ favorite quotes from the book. As Melody from
Group 1 said in the group interview, she felt that putting just the text on a white background
helped to showcase the words in their favorite quotes.
The use of modes by the remaining 50 slides can be seen in Table 3:
This category of slides was found to feature the most variation (i.e. a total of 12 types) in slide
design. Two slides (Slides 6–15 & 6-16) used four modes (text, movie image, within slide animation,
and caption boxes) to discuss the group members’ favorite quotes. The caption boxes were used to
provide reasons (see Figure 1).
Data collected from the questionnaires and group interviews revealed that eight out of the nine
groups followed a composing in pieces model (Jocius 2018) in which each group member was
responsible for the text contents of two to three slides; a principal PPT designer then put everything
together in a slideshow. In their questionnaires, some members of Groups 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 also
mentioned that a LINE group was created as the major communication channel.

Table 2. Use of modes with a completely white background (number of slides = 20).
Types of slides Number of slides
1. Text only 3
2. Text + colored illustrations 3
3. Text + colored movie image 2
4. Text + black-and-white illustrations 9
5. Text + other graphic designs (circles, blocks) 3

Table 3. Use of modes with colored backgrounds (number of slides = 50).

Types of slides Number of slides
1. Text only 4
2. Text + (within) slide animation 1
3. Text + colored illustrations 4
4. Text + black-and-white illustrations 1
5. Text + colored book covers as image 2
6. Text + black-and-white illustrations + between-slide transition 7
7. Text + black-and-white illustrations + caption box 1
8. Text + colored illustrations + (within) slide animation 9
9. Text + colored illustrations + between-slide transition 14
10. Text + colored book image as slide backgrounds 4
11. Text + colored movie image as slide background 1
12. Text + movie image + (within) slide animation + caption boxes 2
8 C. W. CHEN

Figure 1. The use of four modes in a slide. Research question #2: Collaborating with group members.

Groups 2 and 9 were among the groups which followed the composing in pieces model (Jocius
2018), but they did not create a LINE group for communication. Group 2 remarked that they used
the SlideShare function of Google Docs while putting together the slides. However, for some
unknown technical reasons, Google Docs did not automatically save the changes they made. So
on the day of the presentation, they were forced to present with a partially finished slideshow. In
the case of Group 9, their composing in pieces process was made possible by each group member
emailing his/her slides to the principal PPT designer.
Group 1 was the only group that did not adopt a composing in pieces model. The group met in
school on a weekend to decide what to put on each slide. Once they were certain about the slide
contents (including the text and corresponding illustrations), a student then took the role of slide
designer to put everything together. This collaboration model, named composing as a group, paid
off, as their slides contained carefully written English. In their group interview, some group
members also mentioned that they were all familiar with the contents that other members had to
present on the stage because they ‘put everything together’ (Group 1 interview).
The lack of care in some groups’ collaboration was evident as they presented on the stage. In
Group 6’s case, the title for the four slides in Part 2 of the presentation contained a misspelt word
‘illustratio.’ This apparent mistake was a direct result of a careless composing in pieces model in
which no one else went over the slides to check their accuracy. The lack of group effort to proofread
the slide contents was also apparent in Group 5 in which a student mistook a newt for a snake. This
mistake was quite serious as in the debriefing stage, the teacher had emphasized a newt, not other
creatures, was placed in the water jug prepared for the headmistress. The newt also had an impor-
tant presence both in the original novel and movie.
Some students seemed to be aware of the fact that their composing in pieces style did not yield
the best result. When asked what could have been done better when preparing the slides, Erin and
Ellen from Group 9 specifically mentioned that they hoped that they could discuss face-to-face with
other group members. Five other students also mentioned that they should have started the collab-
oration process earlier so that their PPT slides were not last-minute products.

Research question #3: setting learning goals

As shown in their returned questionnaires, the participants set a variety of learning goals after the
PPT project was completely. Their learning goals can be categorized into four major categories:
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 9

English learning (N = 24), oral presentation skills (N = 34), soft skills (N = 11), and making PPTs (N =
10).
As can be seen from Categories 1-5, 2-3, and 2-4, some students acknowledged the need to
become more familiar with the anchor text and PPT slide contents before going on the stage. The
PPT project also prompted some students to reflect on how to collaborate and manage their time
better. Viewing each group’s PPT slides in class was also a learning opportunity for some students
– six students mentioned in their questionnaires that they wanted to work on designing more
appealing slides while four reflected on the amount of text that should appear in PPT slides. As
Ian said on his questionnaire, ‘Less is more. I think we need to use less text on each slide.’

Discussion
The current study positioned PPT as a social semiotic tool and a group of EFL adolescent learners as
multimodal composers who used PPT to retell essential parts of Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda
(1988). Each PPT slide was treated as a ‘semiotic artefact’ (Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven 2014, 355)
which may make use of multiple semiotic modes, and a total of 158 slides were collected from 9
student groups. This study first looked into how different modes were combined together to
retell information from the novel. In Hung, Chiu, and Yeh’s (2013) classification of multimodal
design elements in PPT slides, the 5 elements are linguistic design, visual design, gestural design,
auditory design, and spatial design. It was found that text (linguistic design) and text alignment
(spatial design) were used in almost every slide. The next commonly used multimodal element
was visual design, followed by gestural design (i.e. animation). There was no use of auditory
elements, such as narration, music, or sound effect. Unlike Dalton et al.’s (2015) guiding template
which required students to record narration and add sound effects to the slides, the PPT template
of this study did not set such a requirement. Also, the participants had to present in groups in
class, and Part 3 of the presentation required them to share their favorite quotes. As they had an
opportunity to read out the quotes, the participants probably did not feel the need to prerecord
the quotes. Since auditory elements are also an important channel to deliver meanings, teachers
can consider requiring students to audio-record their dramatic reading of their favorite quotes
from the book. They can also design other types of multimodal assignments (e.g. recording
Podcast or making a short video) to encourage students to retell a story in other ways.
With regard to collaboration styles, most groups were found to follow the composing in pieces
model (Jocius 2018) in which each group member made two to three slides before a principal
PPT designer put the slideshow together. It was apparent that some groups finished the PPT in a
great hurry and failed to detect some obvious errors. Some students were also aware of the fact
that their collaboration model did not yield the best results, as quite a few students felt they
needed to learn a better way to collaborate and manage their time better (Table 4). To help students
to collaborate more effectively, perhaps each group member can be assigned a role (e.g. group
leader, graphic designer, devil’s advocate, and grammar checker). According to Hulbert (1994),
assigning a specific role to each student ensures that everyone has a part to play.
In this study, the composing in pieces model also led to the later presenting in pieces. In other
words, most students were responsible for presenting the slides they had made earlier and were
not aware of the contents of the rest of the presentation. Each group should at least rehearse
together and comment on each other’s part before the final product is presented on the stage.
The only group that composed together was Group 1. Their collaboration style is composing as a
group, as group members discussed face-to-face what to put on each slide. This collaboration
style also allowed each group member to be familiar with the contents of the entire slideshow.
The participants also set a variety of learning goals after they completed the PPT project (Table 4).
Most of these goals were rather specific, but not overly challenging. If students are committed to self
improvement and set appropriate strategies, these goals should be achievable. Studies can be con-
ducted to investigate students’ subsequent PPT slides and presentations to trace their long-term
10 C. W. CHEN

Table 4. Learning goals set by students.

Types of learning goals Frequencies
1. English learning
1–1 Speak more fluently N=6
1–2 Increase one’s vocabulary repertoire N=6
1–3 Use English to express one’s ideas N=4
1–4 Read more in general N=4
1–5 Read the novel in greater depth N=3
1. 1–6 Listen to materials in English N=1
2. Oral presentation skills
2–1 Practice voice projection N = 12
2–2 Show more confidence N = 12
2–3 Become more familiarity of the PPT contents N=6
2–4 Memorize the scripts N=4
3. Soft skills
3–1 Learn a better way to collaborate N=6
3–2 Manage time better N=5
4. Making PPTs
4–1 Learn to design more appealing slides N=6
4–2 Learn to write an appropriate amount of text on slides N=4

development as multimodal PPT composers and presenters. In students’ pursuit of learning goals,
they probably need feedback from their teachers. Louro, Pieters, and Zeelenberg (2007) found
that in a weight loss program, the beginners increased their efforts to respond to positive feedback,
and the more advanced participants tended to respond more to failure or negative feedback.
Whether this holds true in the current context of language learning remains unknown, but teachers
can consider experimenting different types of feedback with beginners and more advanced learners
to see how feedback plays a role in students’ goal setting and attainment.
The interview data of the current study suggest that some of the decisions made by the partici-
pants may need to be reconsidered on whether they served the intended purposes. For example, in
the case of Group 9, they were asked why they used a movie image of the Wormwood family as the
background of their closing slide (Slide 9-20). One member responded that it was because they could
not find a book illustration which featured all four people in Matilda’s family. The chosen image
shows the Wormwood family standing rather emotionlessly in front of the father’s shop, and it
may not be the best image to close the presentation. In the future, teachers should work on devel-
oping the tools and instructional practices needed to achieve ‘a vision of the strategic and creative
multimodal composer’ (Dalton et al. 2015, 549). To achieve this vision, language teachers should take
on the role of designers of language learning (Kuure et al. 2016) to address learners’ divergent needs
and differentiated goals (Larsen-Freeman 2018).
In this study, each PPT slide was treated as a semiotic artefact (Zhao, Djonov, and Van Leeuven
2014), and the modes used in each slide were calculated. While this way of calculation yielded a
clear picture on what modes were used more frequently, it did not depict how the modes were
designed into a coherent assemble (i.e. a complete slideshow). In a future study where the focus
is not on each PPT slide, researchers can examine each PPT slideshow as an assemble to see
whether it delivers a coherent message.
In the future, the instructor can work on training students to make informed decisions about what
to put on their PPT slides. Such training can begin with viewing PPT slides made by expert presenters
and understand how modes work together to convey meanings. Also, some students remarked that
they designed their slides to achieve specific effects. For example, as shown earlier, one student in
Group 1 felt that having a completely plain background helped to showcase the words of the group’s
favorite quotes. Whether a certain design serves its original purpose can be another topic of inves-
tigation. The audience can provide feedback on a certain design to the designer, and gaps existing in
the two parties’ perceptions can be further compared and discussed.
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 11

Conclusion
PPT is a good starting point for learning about digital multimodal composing because it is readily
available and students are already making it regularly. This study examined the PPT slides a class
of EFL adolescent learners made to retell the essential parts of Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Matilda
(1988). With their group members, the participants followed a teacher-designed PPT template
which divided the retelling into three parts – story grammar, text for chosen illustrations, and favor-
ite quotes. Most slides were found to feature at least one mode besides text, and the most commonly
used design elements were visual design and gestural design. Educators should work on devising
ways for guiding students on how to integrate modes together to tell a coherent message. To
finish their slides, most groups were found to follow the composing in pieces model and did not
really work collectively to pool together their strengths and resources. Future endeavors should
seek ways to foster other collaborative partnerships (Smith 2019) and examine how different
types of multimodal composing projects can inspire learners to set different learning goals and
become better multimodal composers.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Cheryl Wei-yu Chen teaches English in National Taipei University of Business. She is interested in exploring the different
ways for students to express their voices.

ORCID
Cheryl Wei-yu Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4491-4926

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 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 13

Appendix A
Text-version of the PPT template
Slide 1: Matilda, Roald Dahl 1988
Slide 2: Outline

Story grammar elements

. Setting
. Characters
. Problem(s)
. Events
. Solution(s)
. Feelings
Illustrations 1–4
Our favorite quotes from the original text

Slide 3: Setting
Slide 4: Characters
Slide 5: Problem(s)
Slide 6: Events
Slide 7: Solution(s)
Slide 8: Feelings
Slide 9: Illustration 1

Slide 10: Illustration 2

14 C. W. CHEN

Slide 11: Illustration 3

Slide 12: Illustration 4

Slide 13: Favorite quote 1

Slide 14: Favorite quote 2
Slide 15: Favorite quote 3
Slide 16: Thank you

Appendix B
End-of-semester questionnaire
Please try your best to answer the following questions. You may write in Chinese.

(1) How did you and your group members complete the PPT slides? What were you in charge of?
(請問你和你的小組成員如何完成投影片? 你負責的部分為何?)
(2) If you were to make the PPT again, what could have you done better?
(如果要重新製作投影片，哪些部份可以做得更好?)
(3) In light of my learning from this PPT project (including presenting on the stage), I will set the following learning
goals: (從這個作業[包含上台報告]的經驗，我將設定以下的學習目標:)