A Review of Multilingual Literacy Education from a Multimodal Perspective: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Against the backdrop of widespread digital education, traditional text-based instruction struggles to meet the demands of literacy-oriented multilingual reading and writing pedagogy. Current multilingual classrooms commonly face practical challenges such as monotonous teaching contexts, a disconnect between language learning and real-world application, and insufficient development of intercultural competence. Based on field research in actual multilingual classrooms, this paper draws on multimodal discourse analysis and multidimensional literacy theories, integrating theoretical analysis with classroom practice to explore the application value and practical barriers of multimodal teaching models in multilingual reading and writing instruction. Teaching practices demonstrate that the judicious use of digital, diverse teaching resources can optimize classroom structures, reduce cognitive load associated with simultaneous acquisition of multiple languages, and steadily enhance the quality of reading and writing instruction. However, the implementation of multimodal multilingual teaching in China still faces significant shortcomings: teachers' limited understanding of multimodal instruction, imbalanced allocation of resources across different languages, weak digital literacy among educators, and rigid, outdated classroom assessment mechanisms—all of which hinder the improvement and development of multilingual education. To address these challenges, this paper proposes practical improvement pathways grounded in four dimensions: innovation in teaching philosophy, development of teaching resources, enhancement of teacher competencies, and optimization of evaluation systems. The findings offer practical insights for the digital transformation of multilingual reading and writing instruction, supporting the upgrading and advancement of multilingual education in the new era.