Empowering English as an Additional Language students through digital multimodal composing

Abstract

While digital multimodal composing, underpinned by a critical literacies approach, provides opportunities for students to make informed semiotic choices and voice concerns about social issues, there is limited research exploring how digital multimodal composing is employed to interrogate and challenge the entanglements of language, immigration status and power. This article explores how 23 primary-aged English as an Additional Language (EAL) students (Years 3–6) engaged in digital multimodal composing, in the context of an after-school multiliteracies programme in one Australian school. Conceptualising critical literacies as a bridge to access and transform codes of power, the article explores how the participating students selected and used different semiotic resources for their digital texts while challenging and redefining dominant discourses based on their lived experiences and interests. The study found that both students and pre-service teachers found value in students having access to digital technologies and experimenting with a range of multimodal and multilingual resources to create digital texts, which reflected cultural and linguistic identities. The findings illustrate how the creation of digital multimodal and multilingual texts allows for opportunities for students to reposition themselves as knowledgeable and active meaning-makers with strategic support from teachers and peers.