Abstract:

English literacy learning has traditionally been viewed as “an individual cognitive activity” (Wolfe & Flewitt, 2010, p. 38) where print-based resources are used to decode texts and comprehend the content. However, recent research indicates that this should be redefined to include multimodal literacy which sees literacy as a social practice (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). Multimodal literacy refers to “meaning-making that occurs through the reading, understanding, responding to, and interacting with multimedia and digital texts” (Walsh, 2010, p. 213). Taylor and Leung (2020) assert that one’s ability to read and write “[is] rarely practiced as discrete skills in today’s world, especially in digital contexts” (p. 2), paying attention to the need of multimodal literacy for young English-language (EL) students with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

The use and integration of technology for EL students’ literacy learning has increasingly been important, with multiple modalities and strategies used to elicit students’ engagement (Solanki & Shyamlee, 2012). COVID-19 increased the importance of technology use in classrooms, and teachers attempted to perform digital storytelling and adopt various technological tools and integration to support their EL students’ language learning (Ajmal et al., 2020). However, there has been limited attention paid to teachers who successfully integrated technology in EL students’ multimodal literacy learning. To bridge the research gap, this study investigated how technology has an impact on EL students’ multimodal literacy learning through the detailed review of literature. This literature review was guided by two research questions: 1) What technological tools were adopted for EL students or teachers in K-12 classroom settings? 2) In what ways did technology influence EL students’ multimodal literacy learning? The researchers, one with a literacy and language learning background and another with technology integration background, searched for relevant literature on Educational Source, the biggest database for education articles. They used keywords like “technology”, “multimodal literacy with technology”, “EL multimodal literacy with technology” to find quality research. They compiled and categorized the chosen articles into different sections and summarized them for the review.

Findings illustrated that various social media platforms (e.g. Facebook) in collaboration with digital technologies were linked to EL students’ multimodal literacy learning and practices (Lewis & Fabos, 2005; Li et al., 2015). For example, Li et al. (2015) found that EL students in their adolescence demonstrated their great interest in using social media for their literacy learning. Moreover, while teachers and schools realized the needs of technology integration to facilitate EL students’ multimodal literacy learning, the extent to which technologies are used varies depending on many contextual factors, such as student access to and mastery of technologies and teachers’ perceptions on the role of technologies in EL students’ literacy learning. This review advances a better understanding of the impact of technology in multimodal literacy learning, serving as a guide for practitioners to find relevant technologies to support their instructional goals.

Keywords:

Multimodal Literacy, Technology Integration, EL Students.