Cross-curricular connection in collaborative digital multimodal composing process: insights from translanguaging and transpositioning perspectives

Transpositioning, an emerging concept in Applied Linguistics, has been recently regarded as a fundamental component in the construction of a translanguaging space. Albeit research has demonstrated how a translanguaging space is created for and through translanguaging practices in Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC), less is known regarding how a translanguaging space is created for and through translanguaging practices and through transpositioning in collaborative DMC process. To endorse this under-researched area, this study employs translanguaging and transpositioning perspectives to offer an exploratory account of how students create a translanguaging space for cross-curricular connection in collaborative DMC process. This study uses Multimodal Conversation Analysis to analyse students’ small group interactional data, which is subsequently triangulated with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of video-stimulated-recall-interview data. The findings illustrate that students create a translanguaging space for integrating academic knowledge from other subject areas in collaborative DMC process, thus creating cross-curricular connection. By accentuating the transcendence of different subject boundaries within the translanguaging space, this paper argues that the process of creating cross-curricular connection is facilitated by translanguaging and transpositioning. The space transforms students’ learning experiences by empowering them to see the interconnectedness of different academic knowledge, thereby taking an active role to make their learning more meaningful.