Research focusing multimodal aspects of children's literacy development exists, but there are few studies investigating students' own perspectives on their choice of semiotic resources and conceptions of assessment, when creating multimodal texts.

Theoretically, the study is based on linguistic sociocultural (Vygotskij, 1978; Säljö, 2014), sociosemiotic research (Kress 2003; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Løvland, 2006) and second language research (Axelsson, 1998; Cummins, 2001; Damber, 2010).

The aim of this interview study is to analyze what modalities the students prefer to use in their meaning making in multimodal text productions which will be evaluated by their teacher. The material discussed includes texts and interviews produced by nine-year old students attending public schools during the school year 2012/2013, while they were producing one multimodal text each about the Stone Age. Since the text productions already have been analyzed and reported (Borgfeldt and Lyngfelt 2014), this study includes interviews with the individual students (n=15) and focuses on the sociosemiotic resources that the students have used and which they prefer to use.

The research illustrates that most of the students – regardless of linguistic background – prefer to express themselves through images instead of written text in their text productions. If the students can choose, one third prefers to do the assignment using a computer, another third by playing it out as a play, and the rest like to complete the assignment either by making a movie or by drawing and writing with paper and pencil. Most of the students have difficulties in verbalizing their thoughts about how they will be evaluated. Even when the teacher has formulated what is being asked for from the assignment, the students do not understand how, or in what way, the teacher will evaluate their text productions. Thus, there is risk for discrepancy between the students' preferences and ideas of qualities in their multimodal meaning making, and the teacher's evaluation of their works. To decrease this risk, the students need more thorough instructions in order to understand better of what is being asked for and how the assignment will be assessed.