Reimagining Embodied Disciplinary Literacy for Career-ready Graduates: MEC-guided Role-playing as Self-access Learning in Corporate Communication

This paper investigates the transformative roles of multiliteracies design in role-playing assessment tasks for self-access learning, particularly within the higher education context of Corporate Communication and Branding. Through adopting Lin's Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2016; 2024), tertiary students engage in immersive learning experiences that enhance their practical skills and theoretical understanding of corporate branding and communication. By enacting various corporate scenarios in 13-week coursework training, multilingual learners (N=79) developed a nuanced grasp of disciplinary literacy that extends beyond monolingual English-Medium Education (EME) classroom boundaries. Data generation tools adopted in this case study research (Hamilton & Whitter, 2013; Nohria, 2021) include semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, teamwork logbooks and reflection, along with corporate role-playing documentation and video-recorded corporate presentations. This case study research underscores the effectiveness of MEC-guided role-playing as “strategic translanguaging and trans-semiotizing" (Liu et al., 2024), promoting embodied disciplinary literacy in self-access learning. It also highlights the practical applications of this MEC approach in preparing career-ready graduates, offering insights into the design of self-access learning environments that are dynamic and responsive to real-world demands. Furthermore, this study opens avenues for future research, suggesting the potential for expanded use of multiliteracies design in other disciplinary contexts to nurture career-readiness