Exploring EFL Students’ Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC) Affordance: Stories from Vocational School

Abstract

Due to the massive rapid advancement of media and communication technologies, educational institutions all over the world have recently realized the need of encouraging multiliteracies, whether in schools or at universities. There is rising interest in incorporating digital multimodal composition (DMC) into ELT education. While the use of DMC for multiliteracy development is well established, the important question of how DMC could boost English learning, especially in EFL settings, remains unaddressed. This paper analyzes the affordances of DMC for EFL learning using findings from an Indonesian DMC program. Data were collected from interviews and questionnaires which were given to the students. Then the data were analyzed by using interactive model analysis to locate the relevant information with a range of technical, pedagogical, and social affordances, all of which had varying and interconnected effects on their EFL learning. This study revealed that DMC might also allow students to be completely creative with technology in their activities, open up new learning opportunities, and increase students' social awareness. Finally, this study demonstrates how affordances might improve students' involvement with English learning. However, this study is limited only to students from vocational high school. Other researchers are expected to cover a wider area of study and get the experience from teachers who conducted DMC in their classes.

Multimodal Literacy and Multimodal Assignments in Indonesian EFL Classrooms

“…Moreover, more than half confirm they are fond of online learning with specific preference referring to YouTube and Zoom meeting applications, among many other options. Wulan et al (2022) did a study with the narrative inquiry method, specifically on digital multimodal composing (DMC), with 25 vocational high school students. Participants went through interviews and were required to write a reflection for the data collection stage.…”

“…It is even more interesting to see how multimodal literacy has been challenged with multimodal composing as if the two terms are interchangeable in a particular way. Other things to be acknowledged are how the practice of multimodal literacy and multimodal composing (Hafner & Ho, 2020;Wulan et al, 2022) has predominantly moved and been directed by technological advancements and how this common practice of multimodal somehow sort of naturally defining itself. Therefore, it is essential to look at how far such multimodal techniques have been incorporated in Indonesian EFL classrooms to fill the research gap by providing a comprehensive review of implementation from such practices.…”

Breaking Textbook Barriers: PowToon Videos in Engaging ICT Learning for Young EFL Learners

“…This project pushed students to create a video from scratch rather than based on a given presentation template and significantly increased the whole classroom's collective digital competence. According to Wulan et al (2022), digital multimodal composing does not only boost the students' digital skills, but also their English learning as the program is set in English, even in non-English majors. Having reviewed these studies, the researchers are more convinced of the benefits of this researcher-teacher collaboration project.…”

Multimodal Immersion Towards Learners’ Behaviours Intention to Use E-learning in EFL Classroom

“…Similarly, the multimodal method may benefit students' reading skills owing to the utilisation of diverse media such as texts, images, sounds, and video clips [8]. In terms of multimodal use in vocational education, digital multimodal allowed students to be creative with technology in their assignments, which opened up new learning opportunities and increased students' social awareness [9].…”