From Silence to Voice: Multimodal Meaning-making in EFL Dubbing Projects as a Critical Digital Literacy Practice

Abstract

Abstract

This study explores how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students construct and represent meaning through scripting and dubbing a short silent movie. The project was conducted in an undergraduate EFL Speaking course consisting of two groups (each group consists of four students) at a private university in Subang during the 2025-2026 academic year, after they learned the topic about slang expressions and idiomatic language. This study employed an artifact-based qualitative case study focusing on students' scripts and the final dubbed videos as the primary data. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis through coding, categorizing, interpreting, comparing, and concluding to uncover patterns of language use, performance, and multimodal meaning-making. The findings indicate that students actively reconstructed meaning from visual texts, demonstrated narrative and expressive techniques, and reflected their agency in constructing meaning in a digital communication context. This study suggests that dubbing projects can serve as a pedagogical practice that integrates language learning with critical engagement in digital environments.