Abstract

This work explores the incorporation of children’s books into university second language (L2) Spanish instruction for the development of students’ critical multimodal literacies and meaning making. Twenty-three learners’ collaborative analysis of authentic children’s stories in the target language and the production of their own were grounded in the multiliteracies framework Learning by Design. Instruction also included the responsible use of generative AI technologies. The article first describes the pedagogical intervention that guided students’ work in a beginning Spanish class in the United States. This is followed by the holistic examination of the student-created multimodal stories, with a focus on learners’ digital multimodal composing competence. Findings show that students were able to produce creative artifacts that were thematically and linguistically appropriate for a children’s audience. Some stories also reflected socially relevant issues and aspects of students’ lifeworlds. Nevertheless, all products also point to learners’ difficulty with the choice, organization, and integration of different modes of communication and their limited understanding of their intended audience’s needs, which affected the effectiveness of the messages conveyed. Based on these results, we offer suggestions to address possible shortcomings in the adoption of digital multimodal composing in beginning L2 classes.