Artificial intelligence-mediated informal digital learning of English (AI-IDLE) has received increasing attention in foreign language learning. However, few studies have integrated variable-centered and person-centered approaches to investigate how AI-IDLE relates to achievement emotions and strategic competence for cross-cultural communication (SCCC). The present study therefore examined the associations between AI-IDLE and SCCC through two achievement emotions, specifically enjoyment and boredom, using both analytical approaches. Participants were 435 Chinese university EFL undergraduate students. In Stage 1, a variable-centered analysis was conducted to explore the connections among AI-IDLE, foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language boredom (FLB), and SCCC. The results showed that AI-IDLE directly and positively predicted both FLE and SCCC, while negatively predicting FLB. FLE partially mediated the relationship between AI-IDLE and SCCC. By contrast, FLB did not significantly predict SCCC. In Stage 2, a person-centered analysis was undertaken to identify distinct profiles of students’ AI-IDLE. Results demonstrated that three profiles were identified: passive AI-IDLE users, balanced AI-IDLE learners, and proactive AI-IDLE strategists. Specifically, the profile of balanced AI-IDLE learners accounted for the largest proportion (N = 206, 47.3%). Theoretical and pedagogical implications were discussed.
Interaction provides second language (L2) learners with opportunities for authentic language use and promotes their language development, underscoring the need to identify factors that contribute to L2 interactions. Drawing on the pyramid model of willingness to communicate (WTC), this study explores how classroom social climate (CSC), perceived L2 proficiency (PLP), and WTC influence students’ multifaceted interactions (MI) with their teachers, peers, and computer tools. A total of 665 Chinese non-English majors voluntarily participated in the study. A two-phase analytical approach combining partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and psychological network analysis (PNA) was employed to examine both linear and non-linear relationships among the variables. The PLS-SEM results showed that CSC and WTC significantly and positively predicted MI, whereas the direct effect of PLP on MI was negligible. WTC significantly mediated the paths from CSC and PLP to MI, with mediating effects exceeding the corresponding direct effects. The PNA further underscores the central position of WTC in the network and its bridging role in linking CSC and PLP to MI. These findings highlight key factors shaping L2 interactions and offer practical implications for language education.
This introduction to the special issue “Multimodality perspectives in second language writing and second language acquisition: Issues in theory, research, and practice” situates this collective project in prior multimodal scholarship, and provides an overview of its aims and contents. It starts with a global synthesis of multimodality research in second language acquisition and second language writing, followed by an overview of the aims and contents of the special issue. Subsequently, the focus, relevance, novelty, and intended contribution of the special issue are further assessed from a dual angle, namely, the advancement it represents with respect to past research, on the one hand, and the way in which the theory and research reported in the special issue are embedded in suggested future research agendas in the domain, on the other.
Digital multimodal composing (DMC) and study abroad have each been valued for their potential to facilitate second language (L2) development, yet their intersection remains underexplored, particularly regarding willingness to communicate (WTC). Drawing on Norton’s (2000, 2013) investment theory and MacIntyre et al.’s (1998) WTC framework, this study investigated how Instagram-based digital storytelling about host families shaped WTC and creative expression among five intermediate American French learners during a four-week study abroad program in France. The study addressed two research questions: (1) how host family interactions shaped through multimodal storytelling influenced WTC, and (2) how multimodal affordances (visual, audio, and textual) scaffolded learners’ creative expression and WTC development. Data included semi-structured interviews, weekly reflection journals, stimulated recall sessions, and Instagram artifacts. Two distinct patterns emerged according to learners’ investment levels. For high-anxiety, lower-investment learners, multimodal affordances served primarily compensatory functions, distributing communicative load across modes when linguistic resources proved insufficient. For high-investment learners, these same affordances functioned as sophisticated tools for cultural interpretation, enabling increasingly complex creative expression and sustained WTC development. These findings suggest implications for task design in short-term study abroad programs, particularly regarding how structured digital storytelling tasks may support authentic host family engagement and communicative risk-taking.
At a time when second language (L2) learners can receive automated feedback on their writing from generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), it is imperative to re-envision the role of L2 writing teachers in the feedback process. In this position paper, we argue that multimodal feedback literacy for L2 writing teachers in this GenAI-ubiquitous world requires them to engage in strategic teaming with GenAI to provide feedback on both language use and multimodal synergy, and to orchestrate multiple feedback-giving modes into coherent feedback ensembles to facilitate optimal feedback uptake among diverse learners. Grounded in the social semiotic tradition of multimodality, we challenge the conventional understanding of feedback communication as language-centered and advocate an alternative conceptualization of feedback communication as multimodal. We argue against the narrow conceptualization of GenAI as a tool for generating linguistic feedback and contend that feedback automation through GenAI would dehumanize the learning potential of feedback and undermine the agency of L2 writing teachers as feedback designers. We then, in addition to the GenAI-led automation and human-led assistant models of using GenAI, present three pathways for L2 writing teachers to team up with GenAI for multimodal feedback design and multimodal feedback literacy development.
