What role do multiliteracies play for writing in the 21st century?

From Mono- to Multi – 21^st century language learning

The main goal of education should be to provide every student independent from cultural and economic background with a learning opportunity they can benefit from in their lives. With the technological and societal developments in the 21^st century this constitutes a major challenge as communicational modes within formal as well as informal settings transformed widely.

This multimodality in communication has changed students learning process, forcing teachers to create multimodal concepts in formal language teaching classroom settings (Kaur, Ganapathy & Sidhu, 2012). Their perception is supported by findings of the New London Group (1996) highlighting that the traditional approach to language learning should be reassessed to fit those societal and technological developments. Written linguistic concepts transformed from using forms of standard rules like traditional paper based texts to making meaning by the use of new oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial modes within a multi-cultural setting. These new understandings of writing find expression in multimodal activities in language classroom settings like for instance creating mind maps and presenting results in front of the class, sharing ideas through whatsapp, creating charts and graphs to represent data or writing by using Google docs or laptops (Nabhan, 2019).

Unambiguously the new multimodal modes of discourse practices have transformed the practice of language learning and writing in class. Multiliteracies have transformed written linguistics in order to address our multicultural society, the multimodalities of learning and the digital advancements. Their role for writing has become immense in the 21^st century.

Kristina

References

Cazden, C., Fairclough, N., Gee, J. et al. (1996), “A pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures”, Harvard Educational Review, 66, 1, pp. 60-92.

Kaur, S., Ganapathy, M. & Sidhu, G. (2012), “Designing Learning Elements Using the Multiliteracies approach in an ESL Writing Classroom”, The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, Vol. 18 (3), pp. 119-134.

Nabhan, S. (2019), „Bringing multiliteracies into process writing approach in ELT classroom: Implementation and reflection“, Journal of English Education, Literature, and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 156-170.