Research has shown that arts-based approaches facilitate literacy learning in children; however, few studies have focused on the integration of art and early writing in community-based Chinese heritage language classes, which have been marginalized from the formal educational discourse in the United States. By drawing on the theoretical…

Today's use of technology and media in daily life has altered the dominant role the written word has played in communication over centuries. Currently, educational settings take into consideration the combination of different modes of representation that exist in an array of everyday texts. "Developing knowledge about linguistic, visual and…

Recent scholarship in multiliteracies-oriented pedagogies has advocated for greater attention to fostering 'textual thinking', understood as forms of literacy that consider the complexities of semiotic choices made by authors, and their underlying meanings, rhetorical purposes, and cultural contexts. This kind of engagement with texts calls upon…

The purpose of my dissertation study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of English language instructors about the use of multimodal digital technologies in the teaching of academic writing. Writing academically in English as a second language (L2) is complex and multilayered for international students, and multimodal digital literacy…

With increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in today's classrooms, a growing body of research continues to explore the varied ways in which digital tools and multiple modalities can tap into emergent bilingual students' academic and linguistic strengths. To understand the empirical landscape of this growing research, the authors…

In recent decades, a plethora of empirical work has indicated that collaborative writing (CW) affords more opportunities for collective scaffolding and language negotiation (Li & Kim, 2016; Li & Zhu, 2013; Storch, 2019) and promotes the development of second language (L2) writing skills (Bikowski &Vithanage, 2016; Storch, 2013; Strobl,…

Contemporary society demands from individuals new and relevant literacies that go beyond the basics of reading and writing. Furthermore, texts now appear less confined to a single semiotic resource. The proliferation of different forms of communication like visuals, among others, encourages people to use literacy in multiple modalities.…

This study examines and compares L2 grammatical accuracy in digital multimodal writing (DMW) and monomodal text-based writing (TBW). Utilizing a mixed-methods design, the research incorporates a dataset comprising 180 written texts, a questionnaire, and text-based interviews. Sixty EFL learners were assigned to two groups (TBW and DMW) and…

This paper describes one 4-week long online language learning module which utilizes the animated documentary film "My Favorite War" (Burkovska-Jakobsen, 2020) and analyzes four students' final essays. The learning module was created considering ethnographic views of cultural inferences (Spradley, 2016), the framework of social space…

While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students' written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach…

Multimodal composing is the construction of meanings through a combination of semiotic modes such as visual, audio, and textual to create multimodal texts. Studies have investigated the application of multimodal composing in the English language, in content area classrooms, and within various educational ESL and EFL contexts. However, the…

Purpose: The main purpose is to investigate what resources young emergent bilinguals use to communicate a multimodal response to children's literature. In particular, attention is paid to the ways students translanguage as part of the learning process. Design/methodology/approach: An ethnography-in-education approach was used to capture the social…

This action research examined the process of integrating students' out-of-school digital literacy into a second language composition class and the role of social mediation in developing learner agency. It involved EFL students with pre-basic and basic proficiency (pre-A1 to A1-A2 on the CEFR level) in a Saudi Arabian university. Using socially…

University students are often expected to interpret and produce multimodal texts during their studies. However, their multimodal literacy is rarely developed explicitly and students often lack the language and the knowledge to talk and write about multimodal experiences. Such expectations demand knowledge and skills to approach multimodal texts in…

In light of widespread recognition of the need to explore new forms of literacy brought by the contemporary semiotic world, this study explores the potential Critical Thinking (CT) may offer in developing learners' critical literacy in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context enhanced with the use of technology. Drawing on research in…