Computer Assisted Language Learning

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‘I am not omniscient’: an autoethnography inquiry

into a novice L2 teacher’s implementation of
digital multimodal composing

Emily Di Zhang & Shulin Yu

To cite this article: Emily Di Zhang & Shulin Yu (24 May 2024): ‘I am not omniscient’: an
autoethnography inquiry into a novice L2 teacher’s implementation of digital multimodal
composing, Computer Assisted Language Learning, DOI: 10.1080/09588221.2024.2342876

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Computer Assisted Language Learning
https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2024.2342876

Research Article

‘I am not omniscient’: an autoethnography inquiry

into a novice L2 teacher’s implementation of digital
multimodal composing
Emily Di Zhanga and Shulin Yub
a
School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; bFaculty of
Education, University of Macau, Macao, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

While much research has been conducted on the benefits of Received 19 September
digital multimodal composing (DMC) projects from the per- 2023
spective of second language (L2) students, little attention Accepted 9 April 2024
has been paid to L2 teachers, whose implementation of KEYWORDS
DMC projects in L2 writing contexts may be fraught with Digital multimodal
challenges. To address the niche, autoethnographic research composing; L2 writing;
was undertaken to uncover a novice L2 teacher’s experi- multiliteracies; teacher
ences and struggles in DMC implementation, drawing on professional development;
data from my memories and journals of lived experiences, teacher education
Wechat messages with students, my PowerPoint (PPT) slides
in instructing DMC projects, and student DMC samples. The
results revealed that I, as a novice L2 teacher, faced chal-
lenges in implementing DMC in the Chinese English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) writing context, and the challenges
included students’ misinterpretation of the DMC task; some
students’ dislike and unpreparedness for collaborative learn-
ing tasks; the conflicts between DMC projects and the final
exam and the standardized test; and my fear of showing
incompetence in video making and editing. To address the
challenges, I explored research articles, communicated with
the researchers and students, and reflected on the hidden
factors that contribute to the problem. This study draws
attention to the reform of the exam-, print-, and
language-oriented education system in the Chinese EFL writ-
ing context, and the incorporation of DMC and multilitera-
cies/multimodality pedagogy into writing teacher training
programs.

Introduction
New landscape of L2 writing

In the era following the pandemic, digital advancements and generative

artificial intelligent (GAI) have changed how we write today (Yan, 2023),

CONTACT Shulin Yu [email protected] Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macao, China

© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

moving from paper to screens and from monomodal to multimodal

(Shin et al., 2021). The changes in the writing landscape promises more
potential spaces for the learning of language (Bibauw et al., 2022;
Godwin-Jones, 2023) and multimodal writing (Liu et al., 2024). L2 learn-
ers need new literacy in reading and writing multimodal texts to convey
ideas, connect with people, and showcase identities in daily life
(Buckingham, 2008; Kafai & Peppler, 2011), underlining the need to
weave new literacy into L2 instruction. Meanwhile, technological normal-
ization in language teaching and learning has been increasingly evident
(Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021). Almost all teaching and learning has been
mediated through digital technologies (Godwin-Jones, 2023; Moorhouse
et al., 2023). L2 learners are thus increasingly engaged with a prolifera-
tion of digital tools and multimodal learning materials (Yi et al., 2020).

Digital multimodal composing

Against such a backdrop, DMC, defined as a textual practice involving

the deployment of digital tools to compose texts by orchestrating vari-
ous semiotic modes, has garnered considerable attention from research-
ers and teaching practitioners in L2 contexts (e.g. Jiang, 2017; Li, 2021).
While there has been an ongoing call for the instruction of new litera-
cies, previous researchers tended to focus on the student-perceived
affordances of DMC (e.g. Dzekoe, 2017; Hafner & Miller, 2011; Li, 2020;
Vandommele et al., 2017; Zhang & Yu, 2023). Few studies have pro-
vided a contextualized understanding of novice teachers’ lived experi-
ences of challenges in implementing DMC projects in EFL contexts.
Understanding teachers’ experiences and perspectives is crucial to max-
imizing the learning potential of DMC projects and uncovering novice
teachers’ professional development in this process. Furthermore, DMC
is an essential activity of computer assisted language learning (CALL).
Effective and successful adoption of new technology for teaching pur-
poses in CALL is contingent on competent and well-prepared teachers,
who implement CALL activities and foster learning opportunities for
students. While the pivotal role of teachers in the flourishing of CALL
research and practice has been well acknowledged (Gönen, 2019; Healey,
2016), research on L2 teachers and their voices in CALL is still in
its infancy.
As such, the present study aims to conduct an autoethnography to
unpack a novice EFL teacher’s (i.e. the first author’s) lived experiences as
well as her sensitive and private thoughts in the process of the imple-
mentation of DMC, with a special focus on the challenges she encoun-
tered and the strategies she employed to address these challenges
(hereafter using the first-person pronoun). My personal lived experiences
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 3

in DMC implementation might transfer to other novice teachers who

share the practice setting. This study might also inform CALL teacher
education to equip pre- and in-service teachers with the requisite
CALL-related knowledge and skills to deal with contemporary technolog-
ically advanced classrooms.

Literature review
As a technology-enhanced L2 writing task, DMC involves the orchestra-
tion of multiple modes of meaning-making (Jewitt, 2008). The multilit-
eracies theory guides the DMC research based on the argument that “the
multiplicity of communication channels and media and the increasing
saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity” (New London Group, 1996,
p. 63). This theory posits that all meaning-making is multimodal, includ-
ing linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial elements, which dynam-
ically interact with each other during communication (Smith, 2014).
Pedagogically, DMC pedagogy decenters language and considers it as one
mode of composing, and students can create richer meanings than lan-
guage itself may allow for and construct a wider range of identities (e.g.
Jewitt, 2008; Norton & Toohey, 2011).
Regarding empirical studies on DMC, a plethora of studies have
probed into teachers’ implementation of the DMC projects in L2 writing
classes. Dzekoe (2017) documented that the DMC project could help stu-
dents discover rhetorical and linguistic elements to revise their written
drafts and assist them in developing language and voice to convey ideas
that they struggled to express due to linguistic barriers. In a similar vein,
Vandommele et al. (2017) reported that multimodal composing could
promote L2 learners’ writing development. Zhang and Yu (2023) found
that it was useful to make students fully express creative ideas by lever-
aging multiple modes, enhance their enjoyment of writing, and raise
their writing motivation.
Teachers also applied the DMC pedagogy in courses other than the L2
writing course. In an English for science and technology course, Hafner
and Miller (2011) reported that the DMC project fostered learner auton-
omy. In an L2 learning course, DMC was found to improve L2 students’
academic achievement, critical thinking, and learning motivation (Yang
& Wu, 2012), facilitate their vocabulary learning, writing, and speaking
skills (Hava, 2021), and motivate students (Jiang & Luk, 2016) and engage
students (Jiang, 2017) in English learning. In a TESOL education course,
Li (2020) revealed that the DMC project facilitated the students’ learning
of content knowledge and their professional development.
While prior studies (e.g. Vandommele et al., 2017; Zhang & Yu, 2023)
focused on student perceptions of the affordances of DMC, limited
4 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

attention has been given to other relevant stakeholders, such as teachers,

who have a critical role to play in implementing DMC projects and fos-
tering learning opportunities for students. Of the limited studies, some
findings were concerned with teachers’ challenges in implementing mul-
timodal pedagogy. For instance, Almusharraf and Engemann (2020)
reported that while postsecondary EFL instructors extensively employed
online software programs, they were limited to online dictionaries, online
collocation dictionaries, online videos, and social media programs. Li
(2020) reported that pre- and in-service teachers faced challenges includ-
ing topic selection, unfamiliarity with technology platforms, and time
control, calling for peer interaction, and etc. In Hafner and Ho’s (2020)
study on teachers’ perceptions of assessment practices in DMC, teachers
revealed that they had difficulties assessing a large amount of informa-
tion simultaneously in multimodal texts, including both linguistic perfor-
mance and design features. Veliz and Hossein (2020) reported that
English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers had an inadequate
understanding of the nature of multiliteracies pedagogy, and the utiliza-
tion of a variety of modes of meaning-making did not prepare them for
the effective application of multimodal approaches.
Research has documented that both contextual and individual factors
contributed to the barriers to implementing DMC projects. Contextually,
centralized curriculum and high-stakes testing regimes impeded teachers’
pedagogic adoption of DMC due to the absence of multimodality in
mainstream language-based assessment schemes (Mills & Exley, 2014). In
the L2 contexts such as mainland China, the education system privileges
prescribed curriculum and high-stakes exams (Jiang, 2017; Jiang & Ren,
2020), and DMC remains “on the margins” as an “add-on” in the L2
curriculum (Early et al., 2015). English classes are generally featured in
“teacher-centered, textbook-directed, and exam-oriented” (Li, 2014, p.
108). In terms of English writing, the exam-oriented nature determines
its focus on linguistic knowledge rather than content and meaning, and
writing five-paragraph essays in the exams is the major way for students
to practice English writing (Yu et al., 2022).
Apart from that, traditional Chinese culture postulates that teachers
are authoritative knowledge transmitters (Huang, 2004; Pei, 2015), and
the Chinese education system values the “presentation-practice-produc-
tion” instructional approach in large-sized classes (Thomas, 2015), and
students tend to passively receive knowledge without ample opportunities
to participate in meaningful communicative and collaborative activities
(Liu, 2016). While the English curriculum reforms in China start to
encourage student-centered, communication-based classroom instruction
with the aim to enhance students’ communicative skills in real life and
call for EFL teachers to focus more on students’ “participatory and
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 5

collaborative learning” (Li, 2014, p. 108) than on too much practice on

linguistic forms, the instantiation of reform in pedagogical change at the
classroom level is full of complexity and takes time (Liu & Wang, 2020).
Therefore, due to the lack of collaborative learning experiences in their
secondary education, students struggled to collaborate with each other to
complete the DMC projects. They need assistance in grasping the knowl-
edge and skills of collaborative learning.
Individually, teachers may have a deeply-entrenched print bias (Miller
& McVee, 2012), feel unfamiliar and unprepared for using new digital
technologies in their instruction (Jiang & Ren, 2020; Lotherington &
Jenson, 2011; Tan & McWilliam, 2009), and consider DMC less academic
(Yi & Choi, 2015), partly due to their print-centric educational back-
grounds and the absence of DMC knowledge and skills in their teacher
training programs (Siegel, 2012). Students might be faced with challenges
in effectively collaborating with peers to design DMC artifacts due to the
lack of collaborative learning experiences in secondary education
(Hundley & Holbrook, 2013; Li & Pham, 2022).
While studies on teachers’ perceptions of DMC implementation
revealed that teachers faced challenges, most of them relied on teacher
interview data about their implementation of DMC projects, and a dearth
of research has employed the method of autoethnography to throw light
on teachers’ lived experiences of implementing DMC projects and their
challenges amidst the DMC projects. As such, the current study takes an
autoethnographic approach to examine the lived experiences of imple-
menting DMC projects of the first author as a university teacher, with a
special focus on the challenges she encountered and the coping strategies
she employed to address the challenges.

Conceptual framework
The present study is informed by Ertmer’s (1999) framework of first-order
and second-order barriers to educational change and Son’s (2018) frame-
work about digital language teacher development. The former deals with
my challenges in the implementation of DMC, while the latter addresses
how I responded to the challenges and experienced professional growth
in that process.

First-order and second-order barriers framework

Cuban (1988) put forward that educational reforms or changes consist of

“first order” and “second order” reforms or changes. Building on Cuban
(1988), Ertmer (1999) proposed the framework of first-order and
second-order barriers to explore challenges encountered by teachers in
6 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

implementing technological innovations in their classrooms. The first-order

barriers include “access to computers or other relevant equipment”, “soft-
ware availability and quality”, “planning time”, and “technical support”.
The lack of availability of computers and other equipment in schools
poses a barrier for teachers to implement computer-assisted innovative
pedagogy (Becker, 1991). Due to teachers’ heavy workloads, little time is
left for planning and implementing new technology into instructional
activities (Spitzer, 1993). Teachers may also lack experience and training
in effectively using technology in their instruction and thereby need the
technological assistance and support of computer resource assistants to fix
any problems they encounter.
The second-order barriers are intrinsic in essence and entail “teachers’
beliefs about teaching”, “organizational context or culture”, “instructional
models”, “beliefs about technology”, and “openness to change”. Teacher’s
educational beliefs about schooling, teaching, learning, and general belief
system, which might be formed before the teacher training (Munby,
1984; Wilson, 1990). Teachers’ beliefs might be shaped by local educa-
tional norms and expectations. The social context, with its cultural inher-
itance and organizational structure, might either contribute to or impede
innovative endeavors (Cuban, 1993; Fullan, 1991). Teachers need detailed
instructions, exact models, and specific examples of how to implement
technology in their instruction (Dublin et al., 1994), without which
teachers might struggle to make the transition from the workshop or
seminar into technology use in real class. Teachers’ beliefs about technol-
ogy determine to a large extent whether they will use technological inno-
vation in class. The fear of being seen as incompetent in the eyes of
students may demotivate them to acquire technology-related skills in
teaching (Cox et al., 1988; Hannafin & Savenye, 1993). Teachers’ low
levels of openness to change might become an obstacle to implementing
technological innovation in class. This framework was drawn to zoom in
on my challenges in implementing DMC projects as a type of innovative
educational change.

Digital language teacher development framework

Son (2018) proposed an ECCR framework for digital language teaching

and teacher development, which includes “exploration”, “communication”,
“collaboration”, and “reflection”. “Exploration” concerns information col-
lection on digital technologies, tools, and resources; learning about CALL
and digital technology utilization in the classroom; trial of new technol-
ogies. “Communication” refers to interaction with others, such as learn-
ers, colleagues, administrators, teacher educators, and researchers;
utilization of computer-mediated communication tools to interact with
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 7

others personally, socially, and professionally; development of online

communicative competence. “Collaboration” involves cooperation with
others in professional communities; sharing of information, experiences,
ideas, and resources with others; planning, designing, and managing of
collaborative activities; facilitation of collaboration via online communi-
cation tools. “Reflection” concerns critical examination of experiences;
reflection on personal learning and teaching practices; reflective thinking
and practicing; self-monitoring; engagement with critical and contextual-
ized reflection.
Overall, this study was guided by the following two research questions:

1. What were my challenges in implementing the DMC project in the

L2 classroom?
2. What strategies did I adopt to address the challenges of implement-
ing the DMC project in the L2 classroom?

Methodology
Research approach

As a special type of ethnographic research “that connects the auto-

biographic and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Given,
2008, p. 48), autoethnography can be defined by three terms, i.e. auto,
ethno, and graphy (Canagarajah, 2012). Auto means that this method
values self as a rich repertoire of experiences and voices, which are dif-
ficult to capture in traditional approaches. Ethno means that this research
aims to elucidate how culture shapes and is shaped by the self, and one’s
perspectives and experiences are socially constructed. Graphy refers to
writing through creative resources, especially narrative, to delve into hid-
den feelings, motivations, and emotions.
Taking an autoethnographic approach, self-study serves as an estab-
lished methodology for undertaking practitioner inquiry in language
teaching (e.g. Canagarajah, 2012; Liu et al., 2021), which optimizes prac-
tice and forms a grounded knowledge base for teacher education (Peercy
& Sharkey, 2020). In the arena of CALL, self-study provides discursive
space for L2 teachers’ voices, and generates a richly-textured and
powerfully-evocative account of the situated experiences of L2 teachers,
and allows them to conduct a critical self-reflexivity on their integration
of CALL technology into their classroom and their professional growth
in the teaching practice (Nami et al., 2016). It contributes to a consoli-
dated picture of the complexity of L2 teachers’ integration of CALL tech-
nology into the classroom, yields useful insights into CALL teacher
8 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

training and education, and is expected to illuminate future attempts and

practices for successful DMC implementation in language teaching.

Context and participant

The DMC project was implemented as a technology-enhanced L2 writing

task in College English course in mainland China, where English instruc-
tion is guided by a prescribed curriculum and high-stakes testing regimes.
Students need to pass College English Test-Band 3 (CET-3), a standard-
ized language proficiency test in China taking place in June and December
each year, to obtain a bachelor’s degree. This course had 64 sessions in
total over the semester, two sessions a day, two days a week. I, i.e. the
first researcher and a first-year novice EFL teacher, taught four classes
with 50 students in each class. The university had computers and
audio-visual facilities in each classroom.
Students needed to complete one collaborative DMC project over the
semester. The topics of the project were taken from the units in the
textbooks New Horizon College English (Zheng, 2017a, 2017b) (see Table
1). Informed by Jiang and Ren (2020), students needed to follow the
steps of textbook reading, brainstorming, script-writing, filming, collect-
ing and creating multimodal resources, editing and producing videos,
and sharing and distributing the video. Three or five students formed
one group to generate 2–5 min DMC works. In the first class of the
semester, I introduced DMC to students by demonstrating the defini-
tions, genres, benefits, steps, examples of DMC, and video making and
editing tutorials (see Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3). As I situated the
students’ needs for acquiring English in the course I taught, the DMC
project was implemented following the weak version of multimodality
that language is privileged and nonlinguistic modes serve as scaffolds for
L2 learners’ language development, compared with the strong version
Table 1. Topics of DMC works.
Units Topics
1 Fresh start
2 Loving parents, loving children
3 Digital campus
4 Heroes of our time
5 Winning is not everything
6 Earn as you learn
7 Hoping for the better
8 Friendship across gender and border
9 Traces of the past
10 A break for fun
11 Life moments
12 Getting from A to B
13 Relax and explore
14 Wit and fit
15 Weird, wild and wonderful
16 Money matters
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 9

that multiple modes are viewed as equally essential to communicating

meanings in disciplinary practices (Grapin, 2019). After they completed
the DMC project, their works would be displayed in class, and they were
invited to provide peer- and self-feedback on their peers’ and their
own works.
Speaking of myself, I was born in an eastern Chinese province that is
famous for fierce competition for Gaokao, the matriculation test in
China. Teachers there dominated in class and transmitted knowledge to
us, and we students passively comprehended and internalized the knowl-
edge and then applied it in exercises. In terms of L2 writing, most teach-
ers seldom implemented any innovative pedagogy but only provided us
with scores and model essays. I majored in English linguistics and liter-
ature in undergraduate study, linguistics and applied linguistics in MA
study, and English education in PhD study. While I became a college

Figure 1. The definition, genres, benefits, and steps of DMC.

Figure 2. The examples of DMC works.

10 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

Figure 3. The video making and editing tutorials.

English teacher, I merely took two general English teaching courses,

which was far from enough for me to excel at technology-mediated
instruction.
My research area focused on the testing and assessment of second lan-
guage writing, especially L2 DMC, and thereby I was well-equipped with
the theoretical and empirical base of DMC. While I did not receive sys-
tematic training in teaching, I am enthusiastic about teaching and eager
to apply new theories and innovative pedagogy to teaching. As my
research revolved around language testing and assessment, I was keenly
aware of the connection between teaching, learning, and assessment and
highly recognized the importance of assessment in facilitating learning.
In terms of the students, all of them were first-year non-English majors
from four parallel classes, and their majors included Arts, Art and
Technology, Music, and Computer Science. Their ages fell into the range
of 18–23 years old. The students’ English proficiency did not differ much,
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 11

which was generally low to intermediate based on the placement test at

the very beginning of the semester. The participants signed the consent
form at the beginning of the course and all of them agreed to participate
in this DMC project.

Data collection and analysis

While autoethnographic data are mainly in the form of personal narra-

tives, data from other sources were also collected for the purpose of tri-
angulation (see Table 2). In this study, the major data source was my
lived experiences and memories of implementing DMC projects in the
L2 classroom over one semester from September 2020 to June 2021. I
kept writing journals with the computer every week to record my emo-
tions, analysis, and reflection on critical incidents in my implementation
of DMC, which contained 8639 words. While personal memory is a
unique and valuable information source, the reliance on it raises con-
cerns about the reliability and validity of the findings (Chang, 2008). To
avoid memory censoring, other external sources were involved, including
Wechat messages with students, my PPT slides in instructing DMC proj-
ects, and student DMC samples over one semester. The Wechat messages
with students primarily involved their inquiries about the problems they
encountered in the DMC projects and my suggestions for them to tackle
the problems. The PPT slides showed my instructions for DMC projects
to students. DMC samples were the students’ 141 artifacts from the three
DMC projects. As data sources included communications with students
and student DMC samples, ethical approval was obtained from the uni-
versity, and consent was gained from the participants.
The data were analyzed both inductively and deductively (Strauss &
Corbin, 1998; Yin, 2011). Ertmer’s (1999) framework of first- and
second-order barriers to educational change and Son’s (2018) framework
about digital language teacher development were drawn to interpret the
data within the broader social and cultural context. The codes for the

Table 2. Data sources and data collection arrangements.

Data sources Data collection arrangements
Primary data My memories and journals I retrieved my memories of implementing DMC projects over
source of the experiences of the semester. I kept writing journals with the computer
DMC implementation. every week to record my emotions, analysis, and reflection
on critical incidents and moments in my implementation of
DMC.
Supplementary Wechat messages with I collected all the Wechat messages with students, which
data students primarily involved their inquiries and my responses and
sources suggestions.
My PPT slides in instructing The PPT slides containing my instructions for DMC projects
DMC projects were collected.
Student DMC samples All students’ DMC artifacts in the three DMC projects were
gathered.
12 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

challenges that appeared in the data were identified and then categorized
into categories and themes. For example, the words, phrases, and sen-
tences, i.e. codes, including “I am left alone”, “out of my league”, “he is
unwilling to make any compromise”, “switch group members”, “unfair”,
“Students consumed so much time in finding group members”, and etc.,
formed the category of “difficulty in grouping”. The codes of “She is just a
free rider”, “no one responded to my messages”, “some students prefer indi-
vidual works”, “Pan almost did all the work”, and etc., formed the category
of “unequal contribution”. The codes “denied”, “silent”, “argued”, “the discus-
sion was ineffective”, “stubborn”, I cannot believe that after three rounds of
discussions, this group did not even make any progress! What happened
to them?!” and the like formed the category of “difficulty in reaching a
consensus”. The categories of “difficulty in grouping”, “unequal contribu-
tion”, and “difficulty in reaching consensus” evolved into the theme
“Students’ unpreparedness in collaborative learning tasks”. The data analysis
process was iterative, as I read and re-read the data to identify relevant
codes and categories, and analyzed their similarities and differences by
shifting attention back and forth between the personal and the social and
cultural context. After several rounds of discussions between the two
authors, four major themes were identified: (1) students’ inaccurate percep-
tion of the DMC project; (2) students’ unpreparedness in collaborative
learning tasks; (3) the conflicts between DMC projects and summative
assessment; and (4) my fear of showing incompetence in video making to
students.
Throughout the process of data analysis, the multiple sources of the data
were constantly revisited, and dialogues and discussions with the second
author and the first author’s colleagues were constantly engaged, to minimize
potential biases in self-studies (Liu et al., 2021; Vanassche & Kelchtermans,
2015). The second author and I also constantly referred to the conceptual
frameworks (Ertmer, 1999; Son, 2018) and relevant literature on teachers’ per-
ceptions of DMC implementation to identify the factors that contributed to
my challenges in implementing DMC projects and my coping strategies in
response to the challenges, which helped me locate relevant codes and cate-
gories in organizing my lived experiences of implementing DMC projects.
To increase the trustworthiness of the findings, firstly, data from multi-
ple sources were triangulated, including personal memories, my journals in
implementing the DMC project, Wechat messages with students, my PPT
slides in instructing DMC projects, and student DMC samples over one
semester. Secondly, this research is longitudinal, and the first researcher’s
prolonged engagement can provide a deeper understanding and make the
findings more robust and reliable. Thirdly, member checking with students
was conducted to ensure precise data interpretation and analysis.
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 13

Findings and discussion

RQ1: What were my challenges in implementing the DMC project in the L2
classroom?
‘Who told you that this is a video assignment?’—students’ inaccurate
perception of the DMC project
After the students submitted their first DMC works, I conducted confer-
encing with five groups in each class to know more about their processes
of designing DMC works. Most students shared with me their endeavors
of selecting apt modes, creating animations, performing, dubbing, and so
forth. One student was exceedingly excited to tell me that they had
learned how to use Premiere Pro [@], a powerful video editing tool.
However, what I was particularly interested in was how they wrote the
scripts and whether they encountered any difficulties in the process of
writing. When I asked them how they wrote the script, some groups
stated that they divided the labor to ask one student to write the script,
and after he/she finished, others would review it and provide comments.
Other groups, on the other hand, revealed that they wrote Chinese first
and subsequently translated it by Google Translate [@] and Sougou
Translate [@]. I was shocked at the way they wrote scripts. “Why did you
use an automated translator to write the script? It is not English writing
at all!”, commented I. One student explained, “This is a video assign-
ment, and we aim to design fancy and perfect videos. Our English pro-
ficiency is limited, and we find it daunting to write accurate scripts”
(Informal communication with students, 22 October 2020). Honestly, I
was upset inside, but I suppressed my emotions and said to them, “Who
told you that this is a video assignment? I have already stated that this
is a technology-assisted writing project. You will need to write using dig-
ital tools. The emphasis is on writing, and videos are simply a form to
present writing”. The students explained that “This is not like what we
write traditionally. We usually write essays on paper in tests” (Informal
communication with students, 22 October 2020), suggesting that they are
deeply influenced by their prior writing experiences, and video scripts do
not count as real writing for them.

To collaborate or not, that is a question—students’ unpreparedness in

collaborative learning tasks
Approximately ten students approached me during their process of
designing DMC works to express their desire to create individual works.
Some told me that they were unable to express their creative ideas and
voice in the DMC works due to the difficulty of reaching a consensus
with others. “When we brainstormed, I shared my ideas, which were
immediately denied by others. I tried to persuade them, but they spoke
14 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

louder, and I eventually kept silent”, articulated one student. Another stu-
dent insisted on submitting an individual work, claiming that “My team
members were all out of my league. If I worked with them, their perfor-
mance would never meet my expectations”. The third student who
impressed me told me that nobody wanted to work with her, and she
was left alone.
In addition, in the peer- and self-feedback session after watching the
DMC works in class, Pan complained that he did the majority of the work.
He sent messages to the team members, but no one responded at all mul-
tiple times. He had no choice but to design the work himself. I was taken
aback and asked the other team members to comment on their work. Ying
laughed as she stated that it was the first time that she had viewed their
work. Others nodded in agreement. I was once again surprised and frus-
trated at their ineffective collaboration.

Exams and DMC: friend or foe?—The conflicts between DMC projects and
summative assessment
To reconcile the summative assessment and DMC, I asked students to
choose topics from the textbooks, read all the relevant texts, and use the
words, phrases, and sentence structures in the texts. After the students
submitted their first DMC works, I was disappointed to discover that
only a few groups used the linguistic resources from the textbooks. Most
of them used simple language with no sophisticated linguistic expres-
sions. My plan to link the DMC project to the final exam, which mea-
sures their mastery of linguistic knowledge, failed. I had informal
communication with some students and inquired them why they did not
apply the words and phrases in the textbook. They articulated a prefer-
ence for comprehensibility over complexity when it comes to the lan-
guage, due to the fact that the audience is their classmates whose L2
proficiency is developing.
When displaying student DMC works, I commented on their language
use, praised some groups that employed words and expressions in the
textbook, and encouraged others to follow in their footsteps considering
that this is an English course with a special focus on language learning.
However, in the second DMC project, the majority of the groups still
failed to use linguistic resources from the textbooks, and I started to
wonder if they had read the texts before designing their DMC works.
In the third DMC project, their deadline was solely two weeks before
the final exam. They started to complain about the time constraints for
the DMC project, and some informed me that they were extremely busy
preparing for the exams of various courses. Some groups even planned
to spend merely two days designing the DMC works. Unsurprisingly,
many DMC works in the third project were of worse quality than those
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 15

in the first and the second projects. They treated the DMC project and
exams as two separate entities that clashed with each other.

I am an English teacher, not a video designer—my fear of showing

incompetence in video making to students
During the process of the DMC project, many students approached me
to ask questions about video editing and making. However, as a language
teacher, I had not been trained to design DMC works or to incorporate
multimodality into the instruction. I only learned some basic techniques
for editing videos with Jianying [@]. Students attempted to utilize more
sophisticated tools such as Premiere Pro [@], Power Director [@], and so
on. My limited knowledge and skills in video editing did not allow me
to effectively assist them in eliminating logos from the videos, changing
fonts in the captions, and so forth. All I could do was to ask them to
visit websites for video editing and making based on the learning tutori-
als I shared with them. Whenever confronted with this situation, I felt
uneasy and feared that students might question my abilities, given that I
was not proficient in video processing.
I reminded them not to dedicate excessive time to the digital aspects,
because the primary goal of this project is to learn English writing.
Nevertheless, the fancy videos signaled that the students still prioritized
the digital aspects. In the informal communication with them, some
expressed their desire for additional guidance and feedback on video
editing and production, highlighting that the tutorials were insufficient
to address all their digital challenges. I was reluctant to confess to them
that I do not excel at video making and continued to ask them to focus
more on writing. Inside, I grappled with significant challenges and
recorded my feelings on 2 November 2020: “I am the authority, and I
cannot look stupid in front of the students. If they know my incompe-
tence in video making and editing, will they doubt me and stop follow-
ing my instructions? What should I do? Do I need to learn how to edit
videos?”
My lived experience of implementing DMC projects in the first year
of teaching College English course was fraught with struggles and diffi-
culties. Firstly, my students had misinterpretations of the DMC task.
Although I reiterated that the DMC project is a technology-enhanced L2
writing task, many continued to refer to the DMC project as “video
assignment” and placed a great emphasis on the fanciness of video mak-
ing and editing of the project, suggesting that students unconsciously
privileged the strong version of multimodality (Grapin, 2019), while I as
the teacher held the belief in the weak version of multimodality (Grapin,
2019). Secondly, there were students in each class being confronted with
problems collaborating with others. Some frowned upon group works
16 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

and preferred to submit individual works because they could not express
their unique and creative ideas through the group work; they regarded
themselves being superior to others and worried that collaborating with
others would lower their performance; they could not find anyone to
cooperate with. For some groups, there were people making minimal
contributions to the group work and relying on others to design the
DMC works. The unequal contribution to the DMC project demotivated
those who were in charge of the majority of the work. This finding
echoed Hundley and Holbrook (2013) and Li and Pham (2022) wherein
students also faced difficulties in reaching an agreement and making
equal contribution to the DMC project. Thirdly, while I tried my best to
mitigate the conflicts between the DMC project and summative assess-
ment, the students still found that the DMC project adversely impacted
their preparation for the final exam and high-stakes standardized testing,
especially in their third DMC project when they were preoccupied with
preparing for the final exam and CET. Even though I encouraged them
to use the words, phrases, and sentence structures from the textbooks,
they still gave preference to the simplicity of the language in DMC scripts
due to their audience awareness.
The first three challenges all fall into the category of organizational
context or culture as a second-order barrier (Cuban, 1993; Fullan, 1991).
Students’ misinterpretation of DMC as a video-making assignment and
the conflicts between DMC and high-stakes tests can be derived from
the marginal status of DMC in the centralized curriculum and high-stakes
testing regimes (Early et al., 2015; Jiang, 2017; Jiang & Ren, 2020; Li,
2014; Mills & Exley, 2014). Under the influence of the exam-orientation
of writing in the mainland Chinese context, students tend to perceive
writing as five-paragraph essays in the exams (Yu et al., 2022) and view
other types of writing as illegitimate. Their unpreparedness for partici-
pating in collaborative projects can be partly attributed to the traditional
Chinese culture that views teachers as authoritative knowledge transmit-
ters (Huang, 2004; Pei, 2015), and the dominant instructional approach,
i.e. “presentation-practice-production” (Thomas, 2015), in which students
tend to be passive recipients of knowledge with limited experiences of
participating in meaningful communicative and collaborative activities
(Liu, 2016). While the English curriculum reforms in China start to
encourage participatory and collaborative learning, real changes in the
classroom take time (Li, 2014; Liu & Wang, 2020). Therefore, additional
scaffolding might be supplied to students to furnish them with the essen-
tial knowledge and skills required for collaborative learning (Le et al.,
2018), such as active listening, effective communication, conflict resolu-
tion, and time management. Teachers can also enunciate collaborative
objectives and employ reliable instruments to assess students’
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 17

collaborative skills to improve their metacognitive awareness of collabo-

rative learning (Koutrouba et al., 2012; Roseth et al., 2008).
As most of the difficulties stem from organizational context or culture,
this pinpoints that teachers in the same or similar contexts might encoun-
ter similar challenges in DMC implementation. The findings contribute
to a broader understanding of the challenges in DMC implementation.
Apart from that, my strategies in dealing with the challenges might also
be applicable to teachers in similar contexts to handle the problems in
their DMC implementation and incorporation of new technology into
their situated teaching practices and enhance their positive attitudes and
confidence in DMC implementation.
My last difficulty of being initially embarrassed at showing my incom-
petence in digital aspects can be categorized into “teachers’ beliefs of
teaching” and “technology” as a second-order barrier (Cox et al., 1988;
Ertmer, 1999; Hannafin & Savenye, 1993), i.e. my initial beliefs of teach-
ers as authoritative knowledge transmitters with the appearance of pro-
fessionalism and perfection (Liu et al., 2021) under the influence of
organizational context or culture (Cuban, 1993; Fullan, 1991), and of
myself as a language teacher who needs to focus more on language
teaching rather than chase the technological fad, echoing Jiang and Ren
(2020). This barrier also relates to the inadequate teaching training for
teaching DMC or multiliteracies/multimodality in my teacher training
program. I never participated in the DMC project in my learning expe-
riences, and I was also not trained to implement the DMC pedagogy.
This was congruent with the earlier findings about the lack of systematic
training in teacher training programs as one of the constraints of DMC
implementation (Siegel, 2012; Veliz & Hossein, 2020). Besides, this chal-
lenge can also be due to my deeply-rooted print bias and unpreparedness
to use new digital technologies due to my print-centric educational back-
ground, resonating with earlier studies (Jiang & Ren, 2020; Lotherington
& Jenson, 2011; Miller & McVee, 2012; Tan & McWilliam, 2009).
It is noteworthy that all my challenges in implementing the DMC
project were not first-order barriers, i.e. “access to computers or other
relevant equipment”, “software availability and quality”, “planning time”,
and “technical support”. This is because the university where I work pro-
vides adequate access to computers, software, the internet, and technical
support. There are computer labs with various software installed and the
internet connected, and students can use computers if they want to. For
teachers, technology assistance is provided, and when teachers encounter
technological problems in class, they can call the assistant, who will
appear in several minutes. This meshed well with the digital revolution
in L2 classrooms mentioned in previous studies (Godwin-Jones, 2023;
Moorhouse et al., 2023; Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021).
18 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

RQ2: What strategies did I adopt to address the challenges in

implementing the DMC project in the L2 classroom?
Constructing DMC self-assessment scale
Recognizing the students’ misinterpretation of the DMC project, possibly
stemming from their unfamiliarity with this task, I reiterated the impor-
tance of writing in DMC once more in class as an alternative form of
writing in the digital era. Because this is an English class, the focus is
writing rather than technology. They need to learn English writing skills
through participating in the DMC project. In addition, I also shared with
them the criteria of DMC assessment based on Hafner and Ho (2020),
which comprise creativity, organization, language, delivery, modal interac-
tion, variety, and genre. While the criteria do not require providing ref-
erences, based on my experience of researching source-based writing in
MA study, I deemed it crucial to provide references to the modes used
in the DMC works. As a result, I added one more criterion providing
references.
While the criteria were introduced to the students via PPT slides that
were shared with them in the Wechat group, some DMC works in the
first DMC project still included plenty of inaccurate expressions (see
Figure 4) and excluded references.
I realized that the learning goals of the DMC project needed to be
made more transparent to them. Meanwhile, I had also been interested
in the research on DMC assessment instrument design. With this in
mind, I constructed a DMC self-assessment scale based on the literature
and the data from the student focus group interviews, classroom obser-
vations of their self- and peer-feedback, and DMC sample analysis. The
scale encompasses nine dimensions, which are utilization of multiple
modes, creativity (which contains providing references), organization, lan-
guage use, delivery, cohesion of modes, genre awareness, and digital skills.
Each dimension of the scale contains several descriptors. The scale was
assigned to students to self-assess their DMC performance during the
process of designing DMC works.
The situation improved in the next DMC project. Several groups sent
me the scripts for review, and I double checked and found that the
scripts were written by themselves rather than being translated by auto-
mated translators. A perusal of their DMC works revealed that the num-
ber of inaccurate expressions had decreased, and the majority of the
works included references. I was cheered up by the attempt to utilize the
self-assessment scale to assist students in developing a better understand-
ing of the task expectations and requirements.
Therefore, I solved this problem via exploration in Son’s framework
(2018): I collected information about DMC assessment and learned how
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 19

Figure 4. Inaccurate expressions in student DMC samples.

to assess student DMC performance by reading recent journal articles,

and I then shared with students Hafner and Ho’s (2020) assessment cri-
teria to inform them of the DMC task expectations. This strategy turned
out to be effective in helping students gain a deeper understanding of
the DMC project. Seeing the effectiveness of the strategy, I proceeded to
reflect on the research articles I read to find more solutions to this prob-
lem and found that designing a self-assessment instrument might be a
good choice. I then explored the possibility of student self-assessment
with the help of a scale in the DMC project. Since the second project, I
have constructed the DMC self-assessment scale and assigned it to stu-
dents to guide their self-assessment. My theory base of assessment for/as
learning makes me recognize the importance of self-assessment in foster-
ing student metacognition of the task expectations and requirements,
which reinforced students’ understanding of the DMC task.

Asking students to provide labor division and modifying DMC instructions

and assessment
To address the problem of student unequal contributions to the DMC
project, I asked them to provide labor division information at the end of
the DMC works, and team members were also required to assess each
other’s performance within the group and submit the scores to me. I
would consider their contribution to the group work when evaluating
their DMC performance, and those who made significantly minimal
20 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

contributions to the DMC project would receive lower scores than their
team members.
Overall, the collaboration problem appeared less prominent in the sec-
ond DMC project. The situation for Pan’s group, on the other hand, was
even worse. Pan and Si submitted a group work; Huang submitted an
individual work, and Ying did not submit assignments. I found myself in
a dilemma about how to address this situation. Ultimately, I decided to
evaluate and assign grades to both the group and individual submissions,
with Ying receiving no score for the project. I also had some informal
communication with my colleague who studies hidden curriculum, i.e.
the unofficial norms, behaviors, and values that teachers teach, and stu-
dents learn at school. She noted that collaborative learning might also be
a type of hidden curriculum, as schools and teachers regard it as the
norm, but students might not have been trained to do so. Her point
sounded reasonable to me, prompting me to have some reflection, and
realize that, due to the emphasis on competition in their secondary
school education, not all students had acquired the knowledge and skills
essential for effective collaboration. They lack the training for collabora-
tive learning and need assistance in developing this competence. I wrote
in my journal on 31 October 2020: “Probably students are not to blame.
They have just started their college studies, and several months ago, they
were in high school preparing for Gaokao. They hardly had any collab-
orative learning tasks then. How can I expect them to be able to do that
when they have not learned how to do that!”
While I wanted to help students develop their collaborative learning
skills, I felt powerless as I lacked the necessary training for such guid-
ance. In retrospect, I did not have many opportunities to collaborate
with my classmates until I was an undergraduate student. I recall how
difficult it was for me to cooperate with my university classmates in var-
ious group projects. I was always the one who did more work even
though we divided the labor, as there were always team members who
did not care about the group work performance and just wanted to fin-
ish the assignment and pass the course.
To cope with this issue, I modified the DMC project instructions and
assessment policy. I decided to permit those who preferred individual
DMC projects to submit individual works. While acknowledging that this
might not be the optimal solution, my constraints in the training of col-
laborative learning competence left me without a more effective alterna-
tive at the time.
Overall, to cope with the second-order challenges in DMC project
implementation, I figured out several strategies which can be categorized
as “exploration”, “communication”, and “reflection” based on Son’s ECCR
framework (2018). Regarding the difficulty and challenge of collaboration
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 21

among students, I initially did not pay due attention to it, attributing it
to what I perceived as attitudinal problems, i.e. believing that those stu-
dents were not adhering to my instructions. I explored to convince them
of the importance of collaborative learning skills in and out of school
and asked them to provide labor division information and within-group
ratings. However, after I found that my strategy failed to work for them,
I communicated with researchers about this problem as well as students
about their difficulties and needs in collaborating with others in the
DMC project, and meanwhile, I reflected on the underlying reasons based
on my own learning experience and became aware that their real diffi-
culty resides in the lack of collaborative learning skills in prior passive
and rote learning experiences shaped by the exam-oriented context. Being
powerless to tackle this problem, I opted for a compromise by giving
them more learning autonomy and permitting both collaborative and
individual DMC projects.

Feeling powerless at the add-on position of DMC in the local curriculum and
test
To address the tension between DMC and high-stakes exams, I talked to
several students to elicit their opinions on this matter. Some proposed a
reduction in the time limit and requirements for the third DMC project,
along with more lenient grading, to allow them to allocate more time to
prepare for CET and final exams. Some recommended condensing the
DMC project to a single occurrence in the semester, and others advised
me to offer bonuses to students who used linguistic resources in the
textbook. While these suggestions were helpful in implementing the
DMC project, their underlying assumption is that DMC has nothing to
do with the exams. I realized that this problem cannot be resolved by
me because the fundamental conflict between DMC and exams is that
DMC is still an odd-on for schools and is absent in both the high-stakes
standardized proficiency tests and summative assessment. I wrote in my
journal on 4 January 2021: “When will the CET integrate multimodality?
If DMC is not assessed by high-stakes tests, students will still not pay
due attention to it”.
With respect to the second-order difficulty and challenge of the con-
flict between DMC projects and summative assessment, I initially explored
asking them to use linguistic structures in the textbooks, which turned
out to be ineffective. I then communicated with students to examine why
they failed to follow my suggestion. Knowing that they were concerned
about the audience’s ease of comprehension of the text, I critically
reflected on the language use in DMC works, and explored references to
the literature on DMC language use and identified confirmative findings
about the less complex language use in DMC in Kim and Belcher’s
22 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

(2020) article. Eventually, I communicated with students again to ask for

their suggestions on resolving the problem of time constraints in the
third project due to their need to prepare for the final exam and CET
test. By critically reflecting on the effectiveness and plausibility of their
suggestions, I finally made the decision to adjust the task requirements
and grading policy to alleviate their pressure.

To be a co-learner and facilitator for my students

This pain persisted for an extended period. Despite attempting to
explore additional video editing tools, my efforts were hindered by the
heavy teaching and research workload. Upon reflection, I sought alter-
native solutions and recalled my exposure to translanguaging theory
during my first year of PhD study. This theory posits that there is an
underlying language competence, and students can draw on all their
available linguistic repertoire in meaning representation. Teachers need
to be co-learners and facilitators in the multilingual class, in which
students can use all the languages they know in class (García & Wei,
2014). I was cheered up, and I decided to be a co-learner and facilita-
tor for the students. Therefore, in displaying their second DMC works,
I marveled at some groups’ videos and expressed my compliments to
them, and meanwhile, I admitted my incompetence in video editing to
them. “Although I am the instructor, I am the instructor of English.
Speaking of video making and editing, many of you are my instructors.
I need to learn more from you in this aspect”, said I. I noticed that
many students beamed. At that time, I could not adequately describe
how released I was. I wrote in my journal on 10 December 2020:
“Admitting my limitations in video making is not as embarrassing as I
imagined. I should be a co-learner with my students. What surprised
me was that most students were so cheerful when I said that I needed
to learn video editing from them. It seems that they take great delight
in teaching me how to make fancy videos”. Teachers might not be
superior to students in any aspect, and teachers can also become
co-learners with students. Later, when I was amazed at students’ video
skills, I would ask them to share with me and the other students their
video-making tools and techniques.
In terms of the second-order difficulty of feeling embarrassed at being
incompetent in providing hands-on assistance to students’ video making
and editing, I explored learning the video making and editing tools but
failed due to the heavy teaching and research workload. I proceeded to
reflect on the difficulty and was reminded of some articles about teach-
ers’ role in the translanguaging pedagogy, which is a co-learner and facil-
itator. This unchained my shackle of traditional belief in teachers as
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 23

authoritative knowledge transmitters, and I started to frankly admit my

limitations in digital technology and my willingness to learn from them.
To sum up, my strategies to address the second-order challenges in
implementing DMC projects captured the three dimensions of Son’s
(2018) ECCR framework for digital language teacher development, i.e.
exploration, communication, and reflection, some of which occurred
simultaneously and interacted with each other. However, not all strategies
were effective solutions to the problems: the strategies for the second and
third challenges were merely compromises due to the influence of the
exam-, print-, and language-oriented educational context in mainland
China and teachers’ powerlessness in making any significant changes
under such context. Collaboration was not utilized in addressing the
challenges of implementing DMC projects because DMC projects have
not been widely applied in Chinese L2 classrooms and none of my col-
leagues have implemented them at the university.

Conclusion and implications

Through the approach of autoethnography, this article zooms in on a
novice L2 teacher’s struggles and strategies in implementing DMC proj-
ects in the Chinese EFL context. This research bears important pedagog-
ical implications. Firstly, the findings showed that the exam-, print-, and
language-oriented education system and curriculum have posed barriers
to the successful implementation of DMC projects in L2 classrooms.
Teachers could explore more meaningful communicative and collabora-
tive tasks and activities, such as collaborative blogging or wikis, collabo-
rative storytelling, role plays, and peer teaching, to foster students’
collaborative learning abilities. Bottom-up efforts can be made by teach-
ers to facilitate integrating multimodality into the task design in language
proficiency tests, such as final exams. Multimodal input could be pro-
vided in listening or writing test tasks to enhance the authenticity of the
tests and make what is taught in class align with what is assessed in tests.
Secondly, schools should not be satisfied with providing adequate
technological access and support to teachers, but rather encourage teach-
ers to experiment with new technologies in their classrooms. For exam-
ple, they may offer regular professional development workshops or
training sessions with a focus on DMC pedagogy to provide opportuni-
ties for CALL teachers to learn new strategies, techniques, and best prac-
tices for implementing DMC in their classes. It is essential for schools to
foster a safe learning community where teachers can ask questions,
exchange ideas, and share experiences and resources with each other
about launching the DMC project. For example, schools can create online
CALL collaboration platforms or virtual learning communities in the
24 E. D. ZHANG AND S. YU

form of online discussion forums, shared Google Drives, or social media

groups, where teachers can connect, communicate, and share resources
related to DMC. When confronted with barriers to implementing DMC
projects, novice teachers need to utilize their agency in employing strat-
egies to address the difficulties. For example, they can explore research
on DMC and learn the experience and lessons from other researchers
and teachers’ action research or DMC practices. They might also collab-
orate with other researchers and teachers, seek their help when encoun-
tering difficulties, and work with them to figure out solutions to the
difficulties. They can also communicate with students to pinpoint the
sources of the difficulties in DMC implementation and involve them in
overcoming the barriers to DMC implementation. Teachers might also
keep self-reflecting, such as writing journals, to critically examine their
hands-on DMC practices, record and monitor their strengths and weak-
nesses as implementors of DMC projects, and explore their own effective
path for this innovative pedagogy.
Thirdly, although the literature has touted the potential benefits of
DMC in facilitating meaning-making or L2 learning, to maximize the
learning potential of DMC and minimize the side effects of DMC, teach-
ers need to critically evaluate the alignment of DMC with the intended
course objectives and student needs. For instance, if the course is designed
to bolster students’ abilities to introduce local cultures to an international
audience via cultural exhibition websites or electronic posters, a DMC
project could function as a viable and relevant tool. If the course aims
to help students majoring in design or art to learn English via shooting
English mini-films, a DMC project would also be an apt alternative.
Last but not the least, as the literacy landscape has changed radically
from traditional reading and writing to multimodal ensembles, L2 teacher
training programs and curricula need to be reorganized to reflect the
new developments in CALL. They may provide a working definition of
new literacies and consider where multimodal pedagogy fits into the cur-
rent curriculum. They might also offer hands-on training to pre- and
in-service teachers to develop their necessary pedagogical knowledge for
new technology integration and help them guide students to engage in
CALL activities, such as DMC. Meanwhile, it is vital for teacher educa-
tors to recognize the key role of teachers in the CALL teaching and
research, discover their difficulties and felt needs by listening to and
valuing their perspectives and voices, and provide support to help them
properly handle difficulties in new technology use and help them undergo
CALL professional growth.
It has to be acknowledged that the autoethnography method in this study
relies heavily on the teacher’s personal experiences, stories, perceptions, and
feelings, which might lead to potential bias and a lack of objectivity in the
 Computer Assisted Language Learning 25

research. It focused on the individual teacher’s contextually embedded expe-

riences, limiting the generalization of the findings to other contexts or popu-
lations. Future studies could explore similar studies with a broader range of
teachers or in different educational contexts to broaden the applicability and
generalizability of the findings. They can undertake co/autoethnography by
involving more participants in collectively exploring their shared experiences
and stories to cross-check and validate each other’s interpretations and find-
ings, thus enhancing the reliability and trustworthiness of the research.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Emily Di Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9803-1088
Shulin Yu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5772-4574

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