Translanguaging within multimodal composition products and processes: A systematic review

Digital multimodal composition affords emergent bilingual students (EBs) distinct opportunities to engage with content, develop aspects of identity, and learn about new technology and composing processes. Multimodal composition also offers opportunities for students to leverage the full range of their linguistic repertoires. This study seeks to better understand how EBs deploy, mesh, and orchestrate varied linguistic resources in composing processes and products. More specifically, it systematically analyzes the empirical research on multimodal composing and adolescent EBs, attending to ways that students translanguage within composing processes and products. In composing processes, EBs translanguaged to access and establish information, collaborate with classmates, and interact with communities. In composing products, EBs translanguaged to express identity, add nuance to and augument meaning, and engage audiences. Implications for classroom practice and theories of composition and translanguaging are then discussed, suggesting the importance of pedagogy that is designed for and responsive to students’ language practices.