Improving EFL students’ multimodal literacy through infographics

Abstract Given the importance of multimodality in the twenty-first century and its relevance to second language acquisition, this study aimed to assess the impact of a multimodal literacy intervention on the reading comprehension of authentic multimodal texts. The participants were EFL students enrolled in a college undergraduate translation and interpretation programme, who were divided into two groups: one serving as the control group and the other as the intervention one. The intervention, based on established multimodal instruction frameworks, utilized five handouts and lasted seven weeks. Before and after the intervention a test assessing participants’ reading comprehension was administered. The results indicated a significant increase in reading scores for both groups; however, the intervention group exhibited a more substantial improvement. Additionally, the qualitative data analysis showed that students in the intervention group valued learning about concepts related to multimodality and thought that learning about multimodality helped them become better translators.