From Words to Worlds: Connecting Languages and Literacies Through Multimodal Learning

Imagine stepping into a classroom where every student—regardless of language and cultural background—feels safe, seen, valued, and eager to share their voice. One way to meet this challenge is by having educators reimagine literacy instruction and assessment through the dual lenses of multiliteracies and multimodalities.

By doing so, we foster positive identity formation for our students by enhancing their metalinguistic, metacognitive, and metacultural awareness. We show that by mobilizing students’ multilingual resources coupled with student-generated data, such as personal narratives, reflective journals, and recorded interactions, multilingual learners can reach their goals and take ownership of their learning. When offered powerful pathways for actively engaging in learning and creating opportunities for multilingual learners’ meaningful access to rich literacy and language experiences, our students’ brilliance shines, right from the start (Gottlieb, 2023).

The Core Argument: In today’s world, we are constantly being bombarded with ever expanding literacies, from computer screens, to billboards, to gaming, not to mention how AI has drastically altered how we process and produce language. Literacy development is no longer confined to a time slot in school as it is integral and necessary to home and community life. With increasing numbers of multilingual learners across our nation and internationally comes the added value of multiple languages and culturally affiliated literacy traditions, such as storytelling, song, and artistry. To address the growing heterogeneity of our K-12 student population alongside the explosion of technologies, we need to rethink what it means to be literate. 

While multiliteracies encompass the integration and interpretation of meaning through various modes of communication beyond reading and writing across cultural and digital contexts, multimodalities serve as the vehicles for relaying that meaning. Multiliteracies and multimodalities combine to create learning environments that foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary for participating in our explosive information network.

Defining Multiliteracies

Multiliteracies redefine literacy as the ability to make meaning across multiple modes- visual, digital, aural, spatial, linguistic, technologies, and languages (The New London Group, 1996; Jewitt, 2006). This broader vision of what constitutes literacy has the potential to empower students, increase their engagement, as well as help shape and validate their identities; in essence, multiliteracies expand multilingual learners’ learning horizons. 

When state academic content standards, language development standards, and technology standards are braided together during instruction, students hold the promise of gaining a full complement of skills for a global digital society (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). In particular, the ISTE technology standards, adopted nationwide, underscore students as empowered learners, knowledge constructors, innovative designers, computational thinkers, digital citizens, and creative communicators, and global collaborators (ISTE, 2016)—all key to multiliteracies.

The Role of Multimodalities in Teaching and Learning

Multimodalities refer to the combined use of different modes of communication—text coupled with visuals, sound, gesture, spatial design, and digital media to optimize understanding. Together with multiliteracies, they form a new vision of teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms (Stein & Newfield, 2006).

In accepting multiliteracies and multimodalities as core ingredients of literacy development, educators enter a new age of teaching. To extend that vision, we propose four shifts for enacting sound literacy practices that encompass the qualities and contributions of multilingual learners.

1. Re-center Literacy to Foster Student Agency

To reiterate, including but moving beyond restrictive, print-based, single-language definitions of literacy calls for approaches that honor students’ linguistic strengths and cultural identities that grant them voice and agency in their learning (Gottlieb, 2023). To gain agency in literacy-related activities, students must be encouraged to interact with each other, participate in healthy discussions, and offer each other concrete feedback. Further building of student agency rests on developing a strong teacher-student relationship which can serve as a springboard for fostering student confidence and growing autonomous learners.

2.  Broaden Instruction and Assessment to Represent the Whole Student

Instruction with embedded assessment and feedback, when purposefully aligned to student interests and meaningfully connected to their lives and identities, motivates students to explore the world around them. Traditional assessments are often print based and restricted to one language, thereby capturing only a fraction of what multilingual learners know. By incorporating multimodal tools—such as visuals, videos, graphics, and oral storytelling—educators can design instruction and corresponding assessment aligned with the Universal Design for Learning framework, ensuring access for all learners, including those with disabilities (CAST, 2018). Acknowledging translanguaging as a legitimate communication tool adds another mode of expression for multilingual learners. These classroom assessments, seamlessly embedded into instruction, can be interpreted with criteria of success or descriptors that reference multimodalities.

3. Cultivate Student Awareness 

In offering an innovative framework for engaging in literacy, multiliteracies and multimodalities challenge traditional ways of thinking. These pedagogical approaches move beyond print as the primary source of learning to foster critical thinking, cultural sensitivity, and self-empowerment. Thus, multilingual learners not only can better see themselves, they also gain insight into cultural perspectives that differ from their own.

Multiliteracies nurture multilingual learners’ growing self-awareness:

• Metacognitive awareness – understanding how one learns, in essence, being introspective on one’s thinking process. Fostering students’ metacognitive awareness in one or multiple languages helps them become more effective, independent, and strategic learners and thinkers. Multilingual learners who actively deploy metacognitive learning strategies become aware of how to analyze their thinking, such as through think-alouds, often resulting in accelerated learning.

• Metalinguistic awareness – recognizing how language works, whether for one or across multiple languages. When multilingual learners gain a sense of the similarities and differences among cognates (words and phrases), syntax (sentence structures), and whole text (discourse), they can readily apply the patterns of one language to another one. For example, the way a fairy tale is portrayed in English is distinct in its messaging in other languages.
• Metacultural awareness – appreciating cultural influences in different contexts (The New London Group, 1996; Gottlieb, 2023; 2024). In drawing on students’ ‘funds of identity’, multilingual learners can understand the influences of differing cultural perspectives on different communication modes (Esteban-Guitart  & Moll, 2014). Multilingual learners are thus able to readily navigate among different cultures and contexts.

4. Endorse the Expansion of Literacy Practices 

As educators we cannot afford to essentialize literacy to reading, writing, and oral language; in essence, a structured set of skills and comprehension strategies. We must build on that foundation so our students can see their relevance as content area experts, thinkers, and problem solvers. Effective literacy practices for today’s students must address their digital realities where AI literacy, visual literacy, information literacy, media literacy, financial literacy, assessment literacy, to name a few, abound and are part of everyday living. In leveraging multilingual learners' home languages and cultures as a starting place and springboard for learning, building background knowledge on new information and concepts will be based on the familiar. A comprehensive, cross-language approach that supports the integration of all four language domains—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—coupled with multimodalities to enhance access and understanding is crucial for fostering robust literacy development.

Why Multiliteracies and Multimodalities Matter for Multilingual Learners

Multimodal strategies are not just instructional add-ons for multilingual learners—they are bridges to understanding for all students. The array of multimodalities do not necessarily disappear after students have gained comprehension of text. For example:

• Visuals - photos, charts, graphs, murals, diagrams- anchor abstract concepts through varied representations during instruction and classroom assessment.
• Aural/linguistic modes- songs, podcasts, storytelling- immerse learners in rich and varied language input and output, offering different avenues for learning as a complement to text.
• Gestural and spatial modes- movement, simulations, role-play- encourage learning to be active and interactive, reinforcing learning kinesthetically.
• Digital tools- videos, infographics, and co-authored e-books- amplify student voice through media; additionally, serve as a means for collecting, archiving, and organizing student literacy experiences and learning over time, such as through e-portfolios.

When paired with translanguaging practices for purposes of emphasis, reinforcement, expression of cultural uniqueness, and extension of oral and written communication, accessing and advantaging learning through multiliteracies and multimodalities empower students to broaden their identities by using their comprehensive language resources to make meaning (Gottlieb, 2022).

A Classroom Framework: Multiliteracies × Multimodalities

The combination of multiliteracies and multimodalities when considered as viable pathways to learning yields an expansive range of communication possibilities for students. 

Source: Amelia Larson, 2025

Why This Change in Thinking Matters for Teachers and School Leaders

Multiliteracies underscore how education must adapt to meet the needs of our multimodal society (Tricamo, 2021).

For Teachers

• Affirm Identities: With multiliteracies, multilingual learners’ home languages and cultures are positioned as assets and translanguaging is accepted as a natural occurrence.
• Broaden Access: With multimodalities, even multilingual learners with limited and emerging English proficiency can show evidence of learning when multilingualism is considered the norm.
• Build Agency: With both multiliteracies and multimodalities, multilingual learners can choose how to express their ideas—through video, poetry, or art- as multiple pathways to literacy and learning are acceptable for students to pursue.

For Administrators

• Equity in Assessment: Multimodal approaches provide more complete pictures of student learning whether in one or more languages (Grapin & Llosa, 2022).
• Alignment with Standards: WIDA’s 2023 Spanish language development standards framework highlights multiliteracies and multimodal practices, reinforcing their importance in high-quality instruction.
• Future Readiness: Preparing students for an ever evolving digital, visual, multilingual world requires embedding multiliteracies and multimodalities across curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Instructional Takeaways

What educators do today to apprentice multilingual learners into advantaging multiliteracies will enhance their access to learning.

• Assessment: Go beyond responses to written text—use podcasts, infographics, and multimedia projects as the basis for interpreting what students can do across linguistic boundaries and modes of communication. Consider how AI can benefit students’ growth in language development, as in comparing oral and written original student samples against AI generated ones as self-assessment checks.
• Instruction: Pair reading with multimodal storytelling through art, music, or digital platforms; encourage students to take leadership in their learning by advocating and negotiating for use of their preferred mode. Along with integrating content and language, incorporate multimodalities into learning targets for every instructional unit (Gottlieb, 2024).
• Collaboration: Encourage group projects through ongoing dialog, student interaction, and sharing of ideas where students have opportunities to contribute their growing conceptual and language understanding through their strongest modes. Extend collaboration through multi-media outreach to families and community organizations.
• Reflection: Guide students to analyze how a message shifts across modes—for example, a meme vs. a paragraph. Use illustrated texts generated from students and other authentic audiences as exemplars for giving peer feedback, showing how visualization and other modes can enrich text messaging.

Why This Work Is Urgent

•  Convergence of School and World: Communication today can be characterized as digital, multilingual, visual, even gestural. Schools must keep pace with rapidly evolving and changing technologies to equip students in furthering ways  to communicate. AI is a prime example of the expression of our shrinking world of language and thought.  
• Language in Action: Traditional monolingual instructional materials and assessment often do not reflect the brilliance of multilingual learners. In envisioning academic languaging as actionable and dynamic, a reflection of multilingual learners entire lived experiences that rests in their hands, rather than the static inflexible nature of academic language, we begin to center ownership of literacy and learning from the perspective of the learner (Ernst-Slavit & Gottlieb, 2026).
• 21st-Century Skills: Creativity, adaptability, and critical media literacy naturally emerge from multimodal learning (Crandall, 2012; Baker et al., 2014). Designing multimodal real-life products with students enhances their 21st-century skills and fosters interaction, self-expression, and authentic communication, all contributing to multilingual learners’ sense of self efficacy and belonging.

Final Thoughts

It’s time to reimagine literacy not as a single pathway, but as a set of liberatory practices that encompass multiliteracies and multimodalities in everyday learning. Educators must ensure multilingual learners are not only participants but also leaders, creators, and voices in literacy-related activities in school, at home, and throughout their communities.

References

Baker, C., Jones, B., & Lewis, G. (2014). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning. Heinemann.

CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2015). The things you do to know: An introduction to multiliteracies. Routledge.

Crandall, J. (2012). Content-based instruction and curricular reform. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 111–135.

Ernst-Slavit, G., & Gottlieb, M. (2026). Academic languaging: Engaging multilingual students in content area learning. Corwin.

Esteban-Guitart, M., & Moll, L. C. (2014). Funds of identity: A new concept based on Funds of Knowledge. Culture & Psychology, 20 (1), 31-48. 

Gottlieb, M. (2024). Assessing Multilingual Learners: Bridges to Empowerment. (3rd ed).  Corwin.

Gottlieb, M. (2023). Right from the Start: Enriching Learning Experiences for Multilingual Learners through Multiliteracies. Center for Applied Linguistics.

Gottlieb, M. (2022). Assessment in multiple languages: A handbook for school and district leaders. Corwin.

Grapin, S., & Llosa, L. (2022). Equity in classroom assessment for English learners. Language Assessment Quarterly, 19(1), 1–8.

Stein, P., & Newfield, D. (2006). Multiliteracies and multimodality in English in education in Africa. English Studies in Africa, 49(1), 1–21.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.

Tricamo, L. (2021). Multiliteracies, multimodalities, and social studies education. Proceedings of GREAT Day, 2020, article 21.

WIDA. (2023). Marco de los estándares del desarrollo auténtico del lenguaje español de WIDA,Kínder al 12^o grado. Junta de Regentes del Sistema de la Universidad de Wisconsin.

For more on English Language Development, check out Skimming isn't Reading: Reclaiming the Power of Deep Reading in a Digital Age