Engaging EFL student writers in social advocacy through digital multimodal composition and critical pedagogies

Abstract

This study investigates the viability of DMC and critical pedagogies in teaching writing to undergraduate EFL students enrolled in the English Language Teaching (ELT) Department at a public university in Türkiye. In the English in Mass Communication course offered in the Spring semester of 2023, fifty-four (N = 54) students completed four major course assignments: 1) rhetorical analysis of a campaign website, 2) a campaign proposal to raise public awareness about a social problem, advocate change, or generate interest in a community service project, 3) a digital zine to communicate the proposed campaign to a broader community beyond the classroom, and 4) a campaign website synthesizing all prior course work. Data obtained from reflections, assignments, and an end-of-semester survey demonstrated students’ engagement with writing as a tool of advocacy and their perceptions of multimodal text production. Contributing to the growing body of research on DMC and critical pedagogies, this study offers practical implications for teaching writing in EFL contexts.