With recent trends toward integrating generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the second language (L2) classroom, there has been a surge of research on using chatbots for language learning and teaching. However, GenAI chatbots are now starting to be examined in digital multimodal composing (DMC). DMC has been explored markedly over the past decade and provides an opportunity to examine how multiliteracies can be integrated in GenAI-assisted DMC. In this technology in practice forum, the benefits and challenges of integrating GenAI-assisted DMC are reported. Implemented in an American university-based intensive English program in the Pacific context, the GenAI-assisted DMC project was employed in a eight-week upper-beginning English as a Second Language class through a multiliteracies framework–consisting of situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice–drawing on pedagogical components for storytelling. The students created artifacts for future participants in the program. Reflections from the students indicate that engagement was sustained throughout the DMC process. However, the learners struggled with prompting the GenAI chatbot of their choice during the DMC task. By reflecting on opportunities to integrate GenAI-assisted DMC, this forum provides an example of how GenAI can be implemented in classrooms and the procedural steps involved in such a process. Lessons learned from this process are also discussed, which can be improved upon by future iterations.

This paper asks whether computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has an English problem. It surveys the empirical studies published in four English language international CALL journals during the 4-year period (2012–2015) to see whether there was an upward trend in the overall number and proportion of studies investigating English as a target language. For 2012 and 2013, the proportion of English to studies of other languages was roughly equal. But published studies on English in 2014 and 2015 showed a noticeable increase. It then explores three cases in which an overemphasis on English fails to capture the cognitive and social issues around the use of technology for learning and teaching other languages. These include, for instance, the cognitive complexity of typing in character-based languages relative to typing in alphabetic languages, the culturally situated nature of feedback made available to learners using writing software, and teachers of languages other than English questioning the relevance of CALL for their local context. CALL journals both represent and shape the field, and when the vast majority of studies published in prominent international CALL journals explore primarily English as the target language, it may suggest that computer-assisted language learning is becoming synonymous with computer-assisted English learning