Strategic-tactical aspect of multimodal pedagogic interaction

The article deals with the interactional aspect of the school lesson, its multimodal specificity, which determines the strategic potential of pedagogical interaction. The relevance of the study is substantiated, which consists in the need to study the nature and characteristics of the teacher’s interactive behavior as a “focal personality” within the framework of pedagogical discourse. The features and patterns of functioning of multimodal interaction are singled out to describe the strategies and tactics used by the teacher, the intentional content of which is inextricably linked with the non-verbal level of communication. To achieve this goal, an analysis of multimodal means of the informative-arguing strategy of the teacher’s interactive behavior, which is traditionally considered dominant in pedagogical discourse, is carried out. As the main method, the author of the article uses video analysis, which makes it possible to adequately assess the information that is transmitted and perceived by the participants in pedagogical interaction at the verbal and non-verbal levels simultaneously. The analysis allowed the author to identify the tactics of setting the task, the tactics of explanation and facilitative tactics that implement the informative and argumentative strategy. Thus, it was found that for the implementation of the task setting tactics, the most effective means of the non-verbal level are illustrative gestures that indicate segmentation and function similarly to punctuation tools. The author argues that in order to implement the explanation tactics, the teacher uses confirmative accompanist gestures that focus and refocus the student’s attention on relevant information, emphasizing and reinforcing the verbal context in order to avoid the possibility of misinterpretation. Facilitative tactics, according to the author of the article, are implemented on a non-verbal level with the help of gestures and facial expressions of the teacher, aimed at producing correct answers by students. In addition, within the framework of each tactic, the author identifies verbal means that accompany the teacher’s communicative actions. The article concludes that for the most effective perception and assimilation of the material transmitted by the teacher, it is necessary to use the means of various levels.