Practicing multiliteracies to enhance EFL learners’ meaning making process and language development: a multimodal Problem-based approach

Abstract

Research has shown that a multiliteracies pedagogy creates more chance for students to meaningfully read and write to develop their critical perspective on cultural issues. This study experimented such a practice in an EFL college context applying a problem-based approach. Sophomore English majors were engaged in recursive reading and writing processes to relearn Taiwan through orchestrating the collected multimodal resources and creating a multimodal text so as to awaken the target audience’s interest. Findings from both corpus and qualitative analyses revealed that (1) students developed language richness in vocabulary use, sentential complexity, and overall expressive fluency through the practice and (2) the interactive and recursive reading-writing processes had a great impact on the design of the project with multimodal materials, which exerted intertextuality among texts and enhanced the quality of the final project. By supporting with a meticulous scaffolding mechanism, such a multiliteracies project indeed encouraged more autonomous learning among students who experienced a full authorship during the process and finally created works that were authentic and unique.