Fernando, you touched an important point: our contexts! What if we just can't rely on technologies? I've seen how difficult it is to deal with the affordances in one public school specially, during my observations in an ethnographic research for my Mastert's dissertation. Of course I don't mention those problems as an excuse for doing a bad job. However, considering our affordances, we must rely on the fact that multimodality is the basis to any language and a quality job can be done out of it. Renata's great examples show that. Ana's special considerations ponder that, too.

• Denise Landim

There are two common-sense assumptions which might be considered here: firstly, meaning doesn't strictly rely on verbal language as traditional Linguistics have long stated; secondly, multimodality doesn't rely on new technologies. Would synesthesia, then, be something natural in meaning making processes which has long been put aside in traditional schooling? How can we benefit from synesthesia in the classroom? The way I see it, synesthesia is out there in the classroom being up to the teacher to attentively notice them and critically use those moments in favor of an inclusive, ethical education by asking herself/himself How are my students responding to the various semiotic modes around them? Some of the aspects to be noticed might refer to the way students interpret images in textbooks (do students view those images as mere representation of a verbal form or do they conceive of them as texts to be critically interpreted through a visual literacy approach?); also the way they interpret their own gestural, bodily languages in a classroom (are students aware of those gestural architect that happens in a classroom? How do they make meaning whenever there is laughter, irony, sarcasm, repugnance or even silence in their behavior? What would these reveal about themselves?). These are a few real examples I valued during my PhD research: by that time, as a researcher, I tried to grasp the way (be them verbal, visual, oral, gestural) those students responded to the semiotic modes they were exposed to in order to use them as a starting point to a critically-oriented approach to English language teaching. Much of my interpretative analysis relied on those synesthetic responses and to me they were extremely relevant.

• Ana Duboc

I agree with Renata. I think it is possible to use multimodality without technology since we teachers from public schools most of the times can only count on a board and a piece of chalk. It is up to the teacher to use his creativity to produce resources like games, flashcards (images) and so on. An alternative which I consider very productive is to ask students to help the tutor to create these resources collectively.

• Fernando Pardo

At the experience I went through by observing and tutoring teachers in public schools for young children in Sao Paulo, multimodality and synaesthesia were used, withouth technology, in tasks like these:

* games using the body and the English language in open spaces (example: Snake in the grass, can I pass? Only if you are wearing jeans - and the student who is the snake runs after all the ones who aren't in jeans)

* feelings recognition (example: the teacher or a student mimes a feeling and the other students, who have cards with feelings written on them, choose the one they think is being mimed)

Those simple activities contributed a lot to develop the students proficiency in a playful atmosphere and had a lot of meaning for them. Surely, they can be adapted for older learners.

• Renata Quirino