Designing English digital stories for global audiences

Abstract

Viewing digitally-mediated multimodal composing as a new literacy practice, this research investigates how English Language Learners (ELLs) serve as multimodal designers to reach a global audience. Grounded in the perspective of literacy as social practice and the notion of ‘designing’, it reveals that the two focal groups of this study employ local and global resources for multimodal designing. In addition, their family experience, literacy practices, video experiences, and their interactions with friends, instructors, and peers mediate how they select, expand, and orchestrate the cultural resources at their disposal. In relation to intercultural blending, this study reports that ELLs employ ‘authenticating strategies’ and ‘playful strategies’ to reach their global audience. This finding encourages us to reflect upon strategies that can be used to examine the emerging playful or nontraditional multimodal composing that the global youth continues to consume and produce.