A Case Study of English Language Learner’s Multimodal Literacy Practice: Online Fanfiction

초록

This study presents a close examination of one 13-year-old Chinese female English Language Learner (ELL) who participates in an online fanfiction site to create her fanfiction texts and multimodal products (e.g., online images), and to share them with her audience. In this article, we draw on Multiliteracies as a theoretical framework to investigate the literate and social practices she is engaged with through writing fanfiction. Analysis of data uncovers that she remixes various multimodal resources (e.g., orginal media, online games and readers’ feedback) in constructing her fanfiction. This indicates that participating in online popular culture can provide ELLs with more opportunities to develop literacy and language skills unlike the common belief about popular culture as hinderance of academic work. The possible ways to bridge in- and out-of-school literacies are discussed to make English classrooms more relevant to today’s young learners.

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