Expanding Meaning-Making Possibilities: Bilingual Students’ Perspectives on Multimodal Composing

This chapter examines the perspectives of 98 bilingual 10th-grade students who participated in three multimodal instructional units in an English Language Arts class. Based on a qualitative analysis of design interviews, written reflections, and video observations, this study presents the main themes of students’ perspectives on the affordances of multimodal composition, including unique opportunities for conceptualizing through visuals and sounds, communicating in innovative ways, expressing identities, and contextualizing literature. Main constraints discussed by the students are also presented ranging from various technical issues to “finding the right mode.” Building on these perspectives, this chapter concludes with implications for research and practice when integrating digital multimodal composing into the multilingual classroom.