The aim of the present article is to identify the participation opportunities of teachers and learners in meaning construction for new words in the foreign language classroom. This kind of communicative situation is multimodal – participants in the classroom use several means or resources to construct meaning (e.g. verbal expression, vocal expressions, gestures, space and objects). The present article is based on audiovisual material – two Estonian and two French classes. In total, 110 communicative episodes were selected and transcribed. The approach used in this research is micro-level multimodal discourse analysis. The results show that the participants – the teacher and the learners – can be active or passive meaning constructors for a new word. Teachers’ and learners’ active participation in meaning construction can emerge in two ways: 1) multimodally and 2) monomodally (by using one resource only). Interaction models are created based on the results. Three models of situations are distinguished according to the identity of the active meaning constructor(s): 1) teacher alone, 2) teacher and learner/learners together, 3) learner/learners alone. The article analyses the examples of communicative situations to present the participation opportunities of teachers and learners in meaning construction for new words. The results of the study may help teachers to plan their language classes considering the possibilities of activation of participants in the classroom.
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