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Description
As language education increasingly adopts AI-supported learning environments, understanding multimodal meaning-making remains essential for effective communication and learning. This study investigates text-image interaction in a medical textbook used for English-medium instruction (EMI) at a Vietnamese medical university from a multimodal discourse perspective. Twenty anatomical illustrations, diagrams, and labelled figures were selected because they represented key forms of visual support in the textbook using Bateman’s (2014) framework of text-image relations. The analysis focuses on how anatomical illustrations, diagrams, labels, and verbal explanations interact to communicate specialised medical knowledge in English. The visual and verbal modes work together to communicate specialised medical knowledge, with images clarifying terminology and written explanations helping students understand the relationships between medical concepts. Rather than functioning independently, images and text complement each other to enhance the coherence and accessibility of medical content for EMI learners. The analysis suggests that Bateman's framework is useful for examining how medical knowledge is represented through the interaction of images and written explanations. The findings may also inform the design of AI-supported multimodal learning materials that integrate verbal and visual resources to facilitate disciplinary communication. The findings may also inform future work on the design of AI-supported multimodal learning materials.
Keywords: multimodal discourse, English-medium instruction, medical textbooks, text-image interaction, AI-supported language education
