From Global to Glocal: Multimodal Turn Design and Epistemic Access in Saudi EFL Classrooms

Abstract

As global topics such as environmental sustainability and other contemporary challenges increasingly enter EFL curricula, teachers face the interactional task of making unfamiliar subject matter accessible to learners. This study examines how EFL teachers manage epistemic asymmetries through multimodal localisation and how these practices connect global curricular content with students’ locally available knowledge. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis, the study draws on 30 hours of video-recorded classroom interaction in Saudi Arabia and presents eight extracts selected from 24 episodes. The analysis examines the sequential organisation of topic launches, student responses, and teachers’ subsequent verbal and embodied conduct. Findings show that limited epistemic access becomes interactionally relevant through silence, gaze withdrawal, disengaged posture, and minimal responses. Teachers address these difficulties by redesigning turns through culturally familiar examples, code-switching, reformulation, gaze, gesture, and bodily orientation. Localisation operates both reactively, as repair following stalled sequences, and proactively, as a resource incorporated into initial topic launches. These practices demonstrate how access to curricular content is negotiated through the coordination of language and embodied action. The study introduces Glocal Turn Design as a dimension of Classroom Interactional Competence, highlighting teachers’ situated capacity to connect global themes with learners’ familiar experiences. It concludes that localisation is an interactional accomplishment embedded in turn design and sequence organisation. Practical implications include incorporating video-based reflection and analysis of multimodal localisation into teacher education to support teachers in recognising epistemic difficulties and designing accessible opportunities for classroom participation.