Abstract

Widely researched in educational psychology, observational learning theorizes that individuals who have achieved remarkable success can raise the observers’ expectations for their future and motivate them to excel in their pursuits. Exposing L2 students to influential role models and providing them with information that help them understand and interpret the co-occurrence of different modes in complex multimodal online talks and why and how speakers use these modes might be a good starting point to developing and substantiating students’ speaking skills. Students’ regular visualization of multimodal talks expose them to a type of theatrical situation, allowing them to observe and analyze every movement of the speaker related to gestures, body positioning, proxemics, and facial expression. This article explores inspirational and influential online video TED Talks with the purpose of encouraging L2 lecturers to consider them as challenging and valuable tools, not only to be viewed and listened to in the course of English, but also to be analyzed in multimodal terms.