Jurnal Celtic
Vol. 12 No. 2 (2025): December 2025

Multimodal scaffolding in critical reading: Pedagogical insights from Indonesian EFL learners

Arum Puspitasari (English Department, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia)
Moh. Kholilurrahman Jailani (Universitas Negeri Malang)
Yazid Basthomi (Universitas Negeri Malang)
Suharyadi Suharyadi (Universitas Negeri Malang)
Evynurul Laily Zen (Universitas Negeri Malang)



Article Info

Publish Date
12 Dec 2025

Abstract

Scaffolding through multimodality is increasingly popular inEnglish as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings, providing newopportunities for critical reading proficiency creation withvisual, audio, and text resources. Thus, this study examines thephenomena of multimodal scaffolding among Indonesian EFLundergraduate learners in a tertiary reading course, the criticalreading course. The study used a descriptive qualitativeresearch design, collecting data from 29 English LanguageTeaching (ELT) major students through reflective journals, focusgroup discussions, and classroom observation notes to gain indepthinsights into their experiences and perspectives.Through thematic analysis approach, several themes werefound from participants' reflections and discussions: (1)multimodal texts promoted student engagement and sustainedinterest; (2) visual and audio elements facilitatedcomprehension of abstract/intricate concepts; and (3) the nonlinearcomposition of multimodal texts complicated multimodalanalysis due to limited exposure. The findings reveal thatmultimodality serves as both an effective critical readingscaffold and a cognitive complication for interpretation,meaning that multimodal literacy must be explicitly taught.Ultimately, this study contributes to the research gap in criticalliteracy and multimodal literacy in the EFL higher educationcontext with practical pedagogical recommendations based onthe learner perspective.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

celtic

Publisher

Subject

Description

CELTIC is published twice a year, in June and December. This journal welcomes articles in the form of research reports or library research on Literature (English), Linguistics (English, Indonesian), Culture (English, Indonesia) and Teaching (English, ...