Writing is not just writing

Try to consciously look around you right now or try to think back to what you have done today.
What kind of media surrounds you? How have you interacted with these throughout your day? We
have grown used to the technologies we utilize to express ourselves and our thoughts. In the past,
creating a video presentation and uploading it to the internet would have been unthinkable.
Mediatisation has opened up new ways of communicating in our society which has not existed
before. To be able to communicate effectively as a member of society we are required to no only
further develop our abilities, but also to acquire a brand new set of skills.
A group called “The New London Group” created the concept of “a pedagogy of multiliteracies”.
According to this concept, it is essential for learners to develop multiliteracies in order to participate
in economic, work and social life. Learners need to be proficient in a multitude of different
literacies, including multimodal literacy, digital literacy and functional literacy, to be able to make
sense of their surroundings. The act of combining multiple semiotic systems (linguistic, visual,
gestural, audio and spatial) leads to multimodality. A simple text message, for example, can be
interpreted in different ways depending on which emoji is included. Only by combining the
information obtained through the written text and the ones through the image can we make sense of
the meaning. Multimodality cannot only be observed in text messages, but also in many other
aspects of life. Imagine taking a stroll through a city. You may not notice it at first, but you will
encounter numerous advertisements. They can appear on a screen in the form of videos, as posters or
other kinds of media. The concept of Multimodality allows advertisements to combine graphics,
sounds and written text in a way that appeals to an audience and entices them to buy the products
they advertise. Multiliteracies seem to be especially important for writing, as written text
nowadays is often accompanied by other modes of communication, such as images or sounds, as we
have seen in the examples mentioned above. It is therefore insufficient to teach writing in isolation.
Writing needs to be taught in connection to other semiotic systems. Furthermore, Students need to
develop multiliteracies not only for understanding texts but also for creating them themselves.
To conclude, learners need to develop multiliteracies to be able to participate in society and to be
able to communicate effectively. Multiliteracy is also important in how we should teach writing in
school and it will only increase in importance in the wake of technological progress and
globalisation.

-Dieu Chinh