A Window into Multilingual Students' Worlds: Using Multimodal Writing to Support Writing Growth

Abstract

Writing in school has long been disconnected and inauthentic to multilingual learners due to its monolingual, language-focused, and standardized features. Although more and more researchers have called for and explored newer asset-based writing pedagogies, such as digital multimodal writing, to support diverse learners in response to emerging technologies and expanding literacy territories in recent decades. However, there is a need for guidance for teachers to better embrace these digital and multimodal resources into writing classrooms. Therefore, this article highlights a digital multimodal writing cycle for planning, implementing, and evaluating digital multimodal writing activities in diverse classrooms. The author illustrates this cycle with examples from one fourth-grade Chinese-English bilingual child in a summer literacy program in the United States. This guide has implications for how digital multimodal writing can be a space to reveal, track, and build upon often unseen resourcefulness and agency of multilingual learners.