ABSTRACT
Online language teaching is a semio-pedagogical activity that requires distinct skills and competencies – such as giving task instructions – due to its multimodal complexity introduced by computer mediation. In this chapter, instructions and their significance within a task-based language teaching pedagogy are discussed as well as the role of social interaction in language teaching. The chapter then focuses on previous studies that have investigated task instructions, specifically in online synchronous multimodal teaching via videoconferencing. Finally, the chapter presents an outline of the methodological and contextual research gaps, which this book aims to fill in the area of synchronous online language teaching generally and, more specifically, related to research on giving task instructions.
