Presentation Developing Multimodal Communicative Competence through ThingLink-Mediated Meaning-Making more

As contemporary communication increasingly relies on multiple semiotic modes, traditional views of communicative competence centered on linguistic proficiency require reconceptualization as multimodal communicative competence. In computer-assisted language learning (CALL), this shift calls for pedagogical designs that provide explicit instruction and systematic practice in multimodal meaning-making. This study reports on a classroom-based pedagogical innovation implemented in a university-level Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) course in Taiwan, where English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students created interactive multimodal projects using the digital authoring platform ThingLink. Anchored in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the course aimed to develop students’ ability to communicate complex ideas through coordinated linguistic, visual, and auditory resources. Guided by a multiliteracies framework (Lim & Tan-Chia, 2022), instruction followed four learning processes—encountering, exploring, evaluating, and expressing—implemented through structured training activities. Data were collected from students’ multimodal artifacts as indicators of multimodal communicative competence. Findings suggest that explicit scaffolding and repeated practice enhanced visual organization and narrative flow, although challenges in intermodal cohesion persisted. The study underscores the need to redefine communicative competence in CALL as inherently multimodal and demonstrates the pedagogical value of structured multimodal literacy instruction in digital learning environments.