English language education in Indonesia is paradoxical. On the one hand, English is widely associated with global mobility, academic competitiveness, employability, and participation in transnational digital networks. In contrast, learners encounter English in classrooms already saturated with Bahasa Indonesia, local languages, religious expressions, youth slang, platform-specific registers, images, memes, videos, and algorithmically circulated texts. For many students, communication is not organized around a single bounded language at a time but through flexible repertoires that combine speech, writing, gestures, sound, images, and digital interactions. Therefore, the central pedagogical question is not whether Indonesian's English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms are multilingual but how teachers and institutions can use multilingualism ethically and academically.
The Indonesian case is especially significant for language and literature inquiry because it links language education to questions of cultural continuity, national identity, digital literacy, and social change. Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa (2025) has reported 718 regional languages in Indonesia, with several classified as vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, or extinct. This situation positions English education within the wider ecology of linguistic maintenance and language shift. A classroom that treats English as the only legitimate language for learning may unintentionally reinforce a hierarchy in which global English is privileged, Bahasa Indonesia is instrumental, and local languages are rendered invisible. Conversely, unplanned reliance on local languages may limit opportunities for sustained English practice. A more productive approach is needed: one that does not romanticize multilingualism but designs it carefully for learning.
This study responds to this need by developing a conceptual framework for digital translanguaging and local culture pedagogy in Indonesian EFL classrooms. Translanguaging is understood here not merely as code-switching between named languages but as the purposeful mobilization of learners' communicative resources for meaning-making, identity work, knowledge construction, and participation (García & Li, 2014). Digital translanguaging extends this idea into online and multimodal environments, where students interpret and produce meaning through captions, hashtags, short videos, emojis, hyperlinks, audio, visual design and multilingual commentary. In Indonesia, such practices are not peripheral to language learning; they are increasingly central to how students read, write, listen to, speak, and evaluate information, particularly in a multilingual educational context where English learning interacts with Bahasa Indonesia, local languages, and broader sociocultural values (Zein et al., 2020).
The argument of this study is threefold. First, Indonesian EFL pedagogy should move beyond the rigid opposition between English-only instruction and unrestricted first-language use. A pedagogically stronger position is purposeful language movement, in which teachers identify when English, Bahasa Indonesia, and local languages are most useful for comprehension, analysis, production, and reflection. Second, local culture and languages should not be treated only as warm-up topics or heritage symbols. They can serve as epistemic resources that help students interpret texts, compare discourses, critique the media, and produce culturally grounded English communication, consistent with culturally responsive pedagogy that connects teaching to learners’ cultural experiences (Gay, 2018). Third, digital literacy must be integrated with language learning because contemporary English use increasingly occurs through multimodal platforms where learners must judge credibility, negotiate identity and participate in networked publics (Leu et al., 2015).
This paper is designed as an integrative conceptual review rather than a report of primary classroom data. Its contribution lies in synthesizing relevant theoretical and empirical scholarship and translating this synthesis into a framework suitable for Indonesian language education. The proposed framework is intended for EFL teachers, curriculum developers, teacher educators, and researchers who seek to align English learning with multilingual awareness, cultural relevance, and critical digital participation. In doing so, this paper addresses JLLI's concern with interdisciplinary research across language, education, culture, discourse, media, and society.

This study employed an integrative conceptual review design. Such a design is appropriate when the purpose is to connect theoretical debates, empirical findings, and pedagogical implications across related fields, rather than to calculate effect sizes or produce a systematic map of all available studies. The review was guided by four conceptual domains: translanguaging and own-language use in language teaching, Indonesian EFL policy and classroom practice, digital literacy and multimodal language learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy in multilingual contexts.
The literature base prioritized peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Scopus and/or Web of Science, particularly journals on applied linguistics, language teaching, multilingual education, and educational technology. Foundational international studies were included, as they provided concepts that remain central to the field, such as own-language use, pedagogical translanguaging, language learner identity, and digital literacy. Indonesia-focused studies were included if they directly addressed English education, translanguaging, teacher attitudes, digital literacy, social media, Moodle-based learning, or critical media literacy in Indonesian contexts. One official government source from Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa (2025) was used to establish the national language diversity context because such national statistics are not always available in journal articles.
The synthesis followed a purposive analytical approach. First, the studies were read for their core claims about multilingual resources, language learning purposes, teacher decision-making, digital participation, and cultural context. Second, the points of convergence and tension were identified. For example, translanguaging research generally challenges English-only assumptions, but language teaching research also emphasizes the need for sustained target language exposure. Digital literacy research values learner participation and creativity but raises questions about information quality, distraction, inequality, and ethics. Third, these tensions were reorganized into practical principles for Indonesian EFL pedagogy.
Because this is a conceptual review, it does not claim to represent all Indonesian classrooms, regions, or local languages. Indonesia's linguistic, cultural, technological, and institutional diversity is too vast for a single conceptual article to fully capture. The purpose is more focused: to propose a theoretically informed and research-grounded framework that can be tested, adapted and criticized in future empirical studies. This methodological stance is important because it avoids presenting invented data while still offering a clear scholarly contribution.

3.1. Indonesia's Multilingual and Digital EFL Ecology
Indonesia's EFL ecology is shaped by the coexistence of a national language, hundreds of local languages, English as a global language, and expanding digital discourse. Bahasa Indonesia plays a crucial role in national integration, schooling, public administration, and interethnic communication. Local languages remain important for family life, community identity, oral tradition, ritual, and regional cultural expression, although their vitality differs substantially across provinces and communities. Meanwhile, English is learned largely as a foreign language but is increasingly visible in higher education, tourism, business, popular culture, social media, and digital entertainment.
This layered ecology complicates the simple models of language learning. In many classrooms, students may use Bahasa Indonesia to understand instructions, local languages to negotiate peer meaning, English to complete formal tasks, and digital symbols to express their tone or identity. These practices are often treated as informal or accidental, but they reveal how learners manage meaning. The challenge for EFL pedagogy is to transform informal multilingual behavior into an academically productive learning experience. A teacher who ignores learners' repertoires loses access to powerful interpretive resources, while a teacher who uses those repertoires without structure may fail to build English proficiency. Therefore, the pedagogical issue is design, not mere permission.
English education in Indonesia has also developed within the context of changing policies. English has occupied different positions across levels of schooling, including periods in which elementary English received strong local attention and periods in which its status became less uniform (Zein, 2017). At the secondary and tertiary levels, English continues to be linked to curriculum demands, examination pressures, academic publications, and workplace readiness. Research reviews of Indonesian English education show a diverse field covering teacher education, curriculum, assessment, learner identity, materials, and classroom practices (Zein et al., 2020). However, this diversity also reveals unevenness: urban and rural schools differ in terms of infrastructure, teacher access to professional development, student exposure to English, and availability of digital tools.
Digitalization intensifies these differences and creates new opportunities. Social media, learning management systems, mobile phones, and online video platforms provide students with English input and authentic audiences beyond the classroom. Students may encounter English through songs, games, short-form videos, fan communities, tutorials, product reviews, and international news. These encounters are not automatically educational experiences. They require critical mediation because digital environments can circulate misinformation, stereotypes, consumerist identities, hate speech and low-quality language models. Nevertheless, digital platforms provide rich spaces for multimodal composition and intercultural contact when teachers guide students to evaluate, remix, and produce texts, responsibly.
The Indonesian context raises cultural questions. Local culture can be used in EFL classrooms in superficial ways, such as asking students to describe food, tourism sites, or festivals in English, for example. Such tasks may be useful, but they do not fully engage with cultural knowledge. A deeper approach asks students to analyze how local stories, oral traditions, community practices, social values, and regional identities are represented, translated, marketed, contested, or transformed in digital and global discourses. This shifts local culture from a topic to a resource for inquiry. Students can compare how a local narrative is told in a family context, in Bahasa Indonesia, English tourism promotion, and a digital video. Through such comparisons, English learning becomes connected to discourse analysis, cultural studies, translation, and media literacy.

3.2. Translanguaging, Own-Language Use, and Pedagogical Purpose
The debate over language use in the EFL classroom has often been framed as a choice between English-only instruction and the use of learners' first language or other familiar languages. Earlier work on own-language use challenged the assumption that the first language is necessarily an obstacle to second-language development. Auerbach (1993) argued that the English-only ideology can marginalize learners and ignore the social conditions of language learning, while later studies showed that first-language use can be pedagogically legitimate when it supports task management, meaning clarification, affective security, or metalinguistic comparison (Hall & Cook, 2012; Littlewood & Yu, 2011; Macaro, 2001). These arguments do not imply that English exposure is unimportant in Japan. Rather, they suggest that language choice should be linked to the learning purpose.
Translanguaging theory extends this discussion by questioning the idea that multilingual speakers operate in separate language boxes. Otheguy et al. (2015) describe translanguaging as the deployment of a speaker's full linguistic repertoire without assuming that socially named languages fully determine mental language practices. Li (2018) frames translanguaging as a practical theory of language that attends to creativity, criticality, and the dynamic nature of communication. In pedagogical terms, Cenoz and Gorter (2020) emphasized the planned use of multilingual resources to promote language awareness, comprehension, and learning across languages. Creese and Blackledge (2010) and Leung and Valdes (2019) further show that multilingual classroom practices require attention to pedagogy, context, and discipline-specific learning. These perspectives are especially relevant to Indonesia, where students' repertoires may include English, Bahasa Indonesia, regional languages, Arabic-derived religious vocabulary, and digital forms.
In Indonesian EFL classrooms, the value of translanguaging lies in its capacity to make learning more meaningful without abandoning English development. A reading lesson, for example, can begin with students' local-language discussion of prior knowledge, move to Bahasa Indonesia for concept clarification, require English note-taking for key vocabulary, and culminate in an English multimodal presentation. Similarly, an academic writing lesson can use Bahasa Indonesia to analyze argument structure, local examples to generate evidence, and English to develop genre control. Such a design allows learners to use familiar resources while still moving toward English production.
However, translanguaging should not be reduced to a general permission to mix languages in the classroom. Without pedagogical purpose, it may reproduce existing inequalities or allow students to avoid difficult English practices. It may also privilege dominant local languages over smaller ones, especially in mixed classrooms. Therefore, teachers need principles for when and why to invite language movement. Useful purposes include activating background knowledge, comparing concepts across languages, analyzing translation choices, supporting peer explanations, developing genre awareness, and reflecting on identity. Less useful purposes include replacing every difficult English task with Indonesian explanations or allowing multilingual discussions to remain disconnected from target outcomes.
A further issue concerns teachers’ beliefs. Teachers may support multilingual practices in principle but feel constrained by curriculum, examinations, institutional expectations, or beliefs that good English teaching requires the maximum use of English. Some may fear that translanguaging will reduce discipline or make assessments harder. These concerns are reasonable and should be addressed through teacher education rather than being dismissed. Professional development should help teachers distinguish between reactive code-switching, strategic scaffolding, and planned pedagogical translanguaging. It should also provide classroom routines, assessment rubrics, and examples of tasks that combine multilingual exploration with clear, English performance outcomes.

3.3. Digital Literacy, Multimodality, and Local-Culture Pedagogy
Digital literacy is not simply the ability to operate devices or search for information. In language education, it involves interpreting, evaluating, creating, and participating in digital texts across platforms and communities. Hafner et al. (2015) emphasized the relationship between digital literacies and language learning, while Godwin-Jones (2015) highlighted learner practices of contributing, creating, and curating. Darvin and Norton's (2015) model of investment further shows that learners' digital participation is shaped by identity, ideology, and capital. These insights are important for Indonesia because students' English learning increasingly occurs in digital environments where language, image, sound, popularity, credibility, and identity are intertwined.
A multimodal view of digital literacy broadens the scope of EFL learning. Students do not only write essays or answer comprehension questions; they also interpret screenshots, subtitles, memes, short videos, comment threads, podcasts, infographics, and online reviews. English in these texts is often mixed with Indonesian, local language expressions, abbreviations, emojis, and platform-specific conventions such as Reddit. Conventional grammar-focused lessons may overlook the communicative complexity of these texts. A critical digital translanguaging lesson can ask students to analyze how language choices position audiences, signal authority, create humor, invoke local identity or simplify complex issues.
Local culture pedagogy strengthens digital literacy by providing learners with meaningful content for analysis and production. Students can examine how local traditions are represented on tourism websites, how regional foods are promoted on social media, how local environmental issues are discussed in English-language campaigns, and how oral narratives are transformed into digital storytelling. In such tasks, local languages and cultural knowledge are not merely translated into English. They were examined as sources of meaning that may not have direct equivalents in English. Students learn that translation involves choice, loss, adaptation, and audience awareness. This supports both language development and cultural reflections.
Critical media literacy is especially important in Indonesia's digital public sphere, where students encounter persuasive content, political discourse, commercial branding, celebrity culture, and viral misinformation. EFL classrooms can contribute to wider civic education by teaching students to ask who produced a text, whose interests it serves, which voices are included or excluded, and how language and visuals shape their interpretation. When these questions are connected to English learning, students practice vocabulary, argumentation, evaluation, and genre awareness while developing critical citizenship.
Digital translanguaging tasks should be designed with equity. Not all students have stable Internet access, high-quality devices, or supportive home environments. Some local languages may have a limited digital presence, and students may feel embarrassed to use them in formal school tasks. Teachers should therefore avoid assuming that every learner can produce polished digital media or represent the local culture with equal confidence. Low-bandwidth alternatives, group collaboration, offline drafting, audio-based storytelling, and flexible output formats can help to reduce these barriers. The goal is not technological sophistication for its own sake, but meaningful language learning through accessible, multimodal practice.

3.4. Evidence from Indonesian EFL Studies
Recent Indonesia-focused studies provide a useful empirical foundation for the framework proposed in this study. Research on translanguaging in Indonesian EFL classrooms shows that teachers and students already move among English, Bahasa Indonesia, and local languages during instruction. Rasman's (2018) study of multilingual practice illustrates that translanguaging can help students negotiate classroom meaning in contexts where strict English-only approaches may be unrealistic. Liando et al. (2023) similarly show that translanguaging practices in an Indonesian EFL classroom involve English, Indonesian, and local language resources. These findings support the view that multilingualism is not an exception in Indonesian classrooms but is part of their ordinary communicative ecology.
Teacher attitudes are also crucial in this regard. Raja et al. (2022) report that teachers' attitudes toward translanguaging shape how such practices take place in Indonesian EFL classrooms. This is important because pedagogical innovation cannot be implemented only through theory. Teachers must believe that multilingual practices are legitimate, manageable and assessable. They also require institutional support. If school leaders, examinations, or materials continue to frame English learning as monolingual performance, teachers may feel that strategic multilingual pedagogy is a professional risk. Therefore, the development of translanguaging pedagogy requires alignment among classroom practice, teacher education, curriculum, and assessment.
Research on digital literacy in Indonesian EFL contexts adds another dimension to the literature. Nabhan's (2021) study of pre-service teachers in an academic writing setting indicates that digital literacy is connected to writing development and teacher preparation. Marzuki et al. (2024), in a study of Moodle use in Indonesian high schools, pointed to strategies teachers used to overcome challenges in online and blended learning environments. Apoko and Waluyo (2025) show how social media can support English language acquisition in Indonesian higher education through constructivist and connectivist learning. These studies suggest that digital tools are not neutral delivery channels; they shape participation, collaboration, access to input, and learner agency.
Recent work on critical media literacy also strengthens the case for a framework connecting language, culture, and digital discourse. Afrilyasanti et al. (2025) examined critical media literacy integration in Indonesian EFL classes and linked it to creativity and essential literacy skills. This is highly relevant to JLLI's interdisciplinary scope of the JLLI, because it treats English learning as more than just linguistic accuracy. Students learn to interpret the media, evaluate meanings, and produce texts creatively. In an era when digital communication can amplify both cultural understanding and social conflict, such work positions EFL classrooms as spaces for critical engagement.
At the same time, the Indonesian evidence base is still developing. Many studies use case study designs, local samples, or specific institutional contexts. This is valuable for depth, but it means that the findings should not be generalized too quickly across the archipelago. More research is needed in rural schools, pesantren and madrasah contexts, vocational schools, eastern Indonesian regions, multilingual classrooms with less dominant local languages, and communities with uneven digital infrastructure. Longitudinal studies are also needed to examine whether translanguaging and digital literacy tasks improve English proficiency, language awareness, motivation, cultural identity, and critical media judgment over time.
Taken together, the literature supports a balanced conclusion. Indonesian EFL classrooms already involve multilingual and digital practices that can support learning when guided by clear pedagogy, and teachers need frameworks that connect language movement, cultural content, digital production, and assessment. The next section proposes this framework.

3.5. A Culturally Responsive Digital Translanguaging Framework
The proposed framework, called Culturally Responsive Digital Translanguaging (CRDT), is built around five principles: repertoire recognition, purposeful language movement, local cultural anchoring, multimodal production, and reflective assessment. The framework is not a rigid approach. It is a design logic that teachers can adapt to different levels, regions, curricula, and technological conditions of teaching. This orientation is consistent with translanguaging theory, which views learners’ linguistic and semiotic resources as integrated meaning-making repertoires rather than separate language systems (García & Li, 2014).
The first principle, repertoire recognition, requires teachers to identify the communicative resources that students bring to class. These resources include English proficiency, Bahasa Indonesia, local languages, religious registers, youth language, digital genres, visual design knowledge and oral storytelling practices. Recognition does not require teachers to master every local language spoken in the classroom. This requires them to create opportunities for students to use, explain, compare, and reflect on their repertoires. For example, students might create a multilingual vocabulary map for a local concept, interview family members about a community practice, or compare how a proverb is expressed in a local language, Bahasa Indonesia, and English.
The second principle, purposeful language movement, emphasizes that movement across languages should serve the learning goals. Teachers can plan stages in which different resources perform different tasks. In a lesson on environmental campaigns, students might first discuss a local issue in pairs using any language available to them, then read an English text about environmental responsibility, identify key persuasive phrases in English, draft a bilingual or multilingual campaign caption, and finally present an English explanation of their choices. The movement is not random; it is sequenced from experience to analysis to production.
The third principle, local cultural anchoring, positions local culture as a basis for inquiry rather than decoration. A culturally anchored EFL task should encourage students to examine meanings, values, histories, and audiences. This principle aligns with culturally relevant pedagogy, which emphasizes the use of students’ cultural knowledge and lived experiences as resources for academic learning and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). For example, a digital storytelling project on a local ceremony could require students to gather oral information, analyze cultural terms that are difficult to translate, consider ethical representation, and produce an English-language story for a specific audience. This encourages students to see English as a medium for cultural explanation and dialogue, not as a replacement for local knowledge.
The fourth principle, multimodal production, recognizes that contemporary communication is rarely verbal. Students should learn to compose images, layouts, audio, subtitles, hyperlinks, and platform conventions while making deliberate language choices. This view is supported by multiliteracies pedagogy, which argues that literacy education must respond to cultural, linguistic, technological, and multimodal changes in communication (The New London Group, 1996). A task might ask students to create an infographic, podcast, short video, digital poster, or an annotated social media thread. The teacher's role is to connect multimodal creativity to language outcomes: vocabulary accuracy, coherence, audience awareness, genre control, and critical evaluation. Multimodal work should not be an ornamental add-on; it should deepen communication.
The fifth principle, reflective assessment, ensures that students explain their translanguaging and digital choices in their portfolios. Assessment should include not only the final English product, but also the learning process. Students can submit short reflective notes describing the languages they used during planning, which cultural terms were difficult to translate, why they chose particular images or captions, and how they evaluated sources. Rubrics can be used to assess English performance, content accuracy, cultural sensitivity, digital design, collaboration, and reflection. This approach makes multilingual and digital practices visible as academic work in the field.
The following classroom sequence illustrates how the CRDT can work in practice. In a secondary EFL unit on narrative texts, students select a local folktale, an oral story, or a community memory. They first discussed the story in groups using Bahasa Indonesia or local languages and identified culturally specific terms. They then read an English narrative model and analyzed its structure, characterization, setting, and moral conflict. Next, they create a translation and adaptation plan, deciding which terms should remain in the local language with an explanation, which should be translated into English, and which require contextual paraphrasing. They produced a short digital story with narration, subtitles, images, and a written English synopsis. Finally, they reflect on their language choices and discuss how the story changes when addressed to a wider audience.
The framework can also be adapted to tertiary academic writing. Students researching a local issue, such as waste management, community tourism, or language maintenance, can collect local-language interview notes, summarize them in Bahasa Indonesia, read English academic sources, and write an English argumentative essay on the topic. The translanguaging process supports data interpretation, and the final English essay develops academic genre competence. Digital tools can be used for source annotation, collaborative drafting, and multimodal presentations. Such practices also reflect culturally responsive teaching because they connect academic tasks with learners’ cultural backgrounds, community knowledge, and social realities (Gay, 2018).
CRDT does not eliminate the need for explicit English instruction. Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, discourse organization, and genre conventions are important. The difference is that these features are taught through meaningful multilingual and cultural tasks. For instance, a teacher can teach reported speech through oral history interviews, persuasive language through local environmental campaigns, or comparison structures through discussions of local and global media representations. English development is strengthened because it is connected to authentic communication purposes. In this sense, CRDT positions language learning as a multimodal social process in which meaning is made through the interaction of speech, writing, image, sound, gesture, and digital design (Kress, 2010).

3.6. Pedagogical, Curriculum, and Assessment Implications
The first implication concerns lesson-planning. Teachers should begin by identifying the target English outcome and then decide how multilingual and digital resources can support that outcome. A lesson objective such as “students will write a persuasive paragraph” can be expanded into a sequence involving local issue identification, multilingual brainstorming, English model analysis, vocabulary development, drafting, peer review, and reflection. Such planning prevents translanguaging from becoming an unstructured fallback and ensures that English performance remains the central focus. This approach is consistent with translanguaging pedagogy, which emphasizes purposeful planning, instructional design, and strategic movement across learners’ linguistic resources (García et al., 2017).
The second implication concerns the development of materials. Textbooks and worksheets should include Indonesian cultural content that invites comparison, analysis, and production. Instead of only presenting generic global topics, materials can include local stories, regional environmental issues, community practices, Indonesian digital campaigns, and translated cultural terms. Materials should also model how to move between languages responsibly and effectively. For example, a reading task might include a box explaining why certain local terms are retained in English writing and how glossing supports international readers. This is important because effective language-learning materials should be adapted to learners’ contexts, needs, and communicative purposes rather than treated as fixed content (Tomlinson, 2012).
The third implication concerns teacher education. Pre-service and in-service teachers need opportunities to analyze classroom language use, design translanguaging tasks, evaluate digital texts, and develop assessment criteria for translanguaging tasks. Teacher education should address common concerns such as fear of reduced English exposure or uncertainty about assessing multilingual work. Video-based reflection, lesson study cycles, peer observation, and microteaching can help teachers practice strategic decision-making. Teachers also need support in low-resource contexts, where digital pedagogy may require offline or mobile-first design. Such professional development activities are valuable because language teachers need structured opportunities for reflection, peer learning, classroom observation, and action research (Richards & Farrell, 2005).
The fourth implication concerns assessments. Conventional assessments often privilege individual written English products and may overlook planning, collaboration, multimodal design, cultural reasoning, and reflection. A CRDT-oriented assessment system can include multiple evidence sources: an English product, planning map, multilingual vocabulary log, digital artifact, peer feedback, and reflection. This does not imply that all components have equal weights. Teachers can emphasize English proficiency while still recognizing the processes that support it. Assessment should be transparent so that students understand how multilingual resources contribute to learning, rather than replacing English competence. This assessment orientation is aligned with authentic assessment, which connects evaluation with meaningful learning tasks, formative feedback, and evidence of students’ learning processes (Fook & Sidhu, 2010).
The fifth implication concerns the institutional policy. Schools and universities should avoid simplistic rules that prohibit the use of any language other than English in English classrooms. Such rules may be intended to increase exposure, but they can also discourage comprehension, participation, and cultural connections. A better policy is guided flexibility: English should be used substantially and purposefully, while Bahasa Indonesia and local languages may be used strategically for specified pedagogical functions. Institutions can support this approach through curriculum guidelines, professional development and assessment rubrics. This position is supported by research questioning rigid monolingual assumptions in second and foreign language classrooms and advocating balanced bilingual instructional strategies (Cummins, 2007).
The sixth implication concerns the ethics. When students use local stories, community knowledge, or digital media, teachers should discuss consent, attribution, representation, and cultural sensitivity issues. Students should not be encouraged to extract community knowledge for school projects without considering ownership and respect for the community. Similarly, when digital platforms are used, privacy and data protection must be considered. Ethical literacy is an integral component of digital language education, especially because digital competence includes evaluating online information, protecting personal data, understanding privacy risks, and using digital content responsibly (Vuorikari et al., 2022).

3.7. Research Agenda
The framework proposed in this study requires empirical investigation. Future studies could examine how CRDT tasks influence English proficiency, willingness to communicate (Mulyono & Saskia, 2021), vocabulary development, academic writing quality and reading comprehension. Classroom-based design research is especially valuable because it allows researchers and teachers to refine tasks across cycles. Comparative studies could examine how different degrees of planned translanguaging affect learning outcomes at different school levels.
Another priority is the regional diversity. Most Indonesian EFL research is concentrated in accessible institutional contexts, while smaller islands, rural schools, eastern Indonesian provinces, and classrooms with less widely documented local languages remain underrepresented. Studies in these contexts could reveal how translanguaging pedagogy operates in places where local languages have different levels of vitality, written documentation, and digital presence. Researchers should also examine how students perceive the use of local languages in formal English learning, particularly in contexts where local languages are stigmatized or associated with low status.
Digital equity is a concern for further research. Future studies should investigate how teachers design meaningful digital literacy tasks under limited connectivity, shared-device conditions, or uneven student access. Researchers can compare high-bandwidth multimodal projects with low-bandwidth alternatives, such as audio storytelling, printed multimodal posters, or offline collaborative writing. Such research would prevent digital pedagogy from becoming an urban privilege for a select few.
Finally, more attention should be paid to assessments. Translanguaging and multimodal projects may be attractive, but teachers need valid, reliable, and practical ways to evaluate them in the future. Future research should develop and test rubrics that balance accuracy in English, discourse quality, cultural interpretation, digital design, collaboration, and reflective awareness. This would make the CRDT more usable for teachers working under real curriculum and grading pressures.

Indonesian EFL education is located at the intersection of global English, national language policy, local linguistic diversity, cultural knowledge and digital communication. This intersection should not be treated as a problem to be simplified into English-only pedagogy. It should not be approached through unplanned language mixing that leaves English outcomes unclear. The more promising path is pedagogically designed translanguaging: purposeful movement across English, Bahasa Indonesia, local languages, and multimodal digital texts to support learning, identity, cultural understanding, and critical participation.
This study proposed the Culturally Responsive Digital Translanguaging framework as one way to organize that path. Its five principles: repertoire recognition, purposeful language movement, local cultural anchoring, multimodal production, and reflective assessment--offer a practical and research-informed basis for curriculum design, teacher education, classroom practice, and future inquiry. The framework contributes to language and literature studies by showing how applied linguistics, cultural studies, digital discourse, and pedagogy can be integrated in the Indonesian context.
The central claim is that English learning in Indonesia can be both globally oriented and locally grounded in the Indonesian context. Students do not need to leave their linguistic and cultural resources outside the classroom to learn English. With careful design, these resources can become the foundation for stronger English communication, deeper cultural reflection, and more critical digital literacy.