Design as Literacy: Unlocking EFL Reading and Writing Through the Read–Write–Design Framework

Abstract

Contemporary communication is multimodal, yet English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction still treats multimodal design as enrichment appended to reading and writing rather than a literacy in its own right. This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the feasibility of a Read–Write–Design (RWD) framework — which positions technology-mediated design as a recursive partner to reading and writing rather than a terminal product — in secondary EFL classrooms, and asked how teachers experienced enacting it. An eleven-week unit was delivered to 24 Grade 10 students in Abu Dhabi’s Al-Dhafra region and studied through a single-group pre–post design paired with semi-structured interviews of seven teachers. Because the pre- and post-tasks were curriculum-aligned but not equated, and no control group was used, quantitative results are reported as indicative rather than as treatment effects: students’ performance on reading and writing tasks improved markedly, and post-test design performance was the strongest correlate of overall literacy (r = .70, 95% CI [.42, .86]). These correlational patterns are interpreted cautiously given the small sample. The qualitative strand provides the study’s principal contribution: teachers described reading, writing, and design consolidating into a single recursive cycle in which composing a digital story repeatedly returned students to re-read and revise. The findings offer a hypothesis-generating account of design as an integrative loop, with implications for professional development, instructional time, and curricular support.