The “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” is a new approach of teaching and learning English that was developed by the New London Group in 1996. The two main ideas of this new approach are linguistic diversity and multimodal forms of linguistic expression and representation. The question is in which way writing is influenced by this approach nowadays.  

In order to understand the role of multiliteracies in the 21^st century, the concept of the “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” should be introduced. The New London Group is a group of ten experts with different professional backgrounds. They shared the belief that the 90s´ literacy was too monolinguistic, monocultural and standardized. Therefore, they developed a new approach to literacy pedagogy. The concept of multiliteracies includes several modes of communication. The main goal is to guarantee attentive participation of students in technological, cultural and linguistically diverse communities. Therefore, students should be able to establish skills in the following areas: functional literacy, multimodal literacy, visual literacy, digital literacy, critical-reflective literacy and multilingual awareness. Furthermore, the New London Group claimed learners should see themselves as designers of their future. They can play an actual role in their learning process. In the context of teaching, this means combining a minimum of two modes to guarantee effective learning. Teaching writing means, for example, to combine images (visual) which represent words and let students write (linguistic) the words the images represent.

To sum it up, the concept of “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” is still a current matter in the 21^st century. A multimodal approach has the advantage of connecting more students with the learning subject by offering many different communication channels. Therefore, the ability to efficient learning raises because different student´s needs are considered. Nowadays, it is commonly known that every person has an individual way of learning new things and a different way of participation. Using multimodal learning strategies in an English Foreign Language Classroom raises the possibility of reaching most of the students. Besides, reaching more students raises the student´s motivation to learn a language and write texts on their own. In my opinion every future teacher should keep the concept of multiliteracies and multimodal learning in mind while designing a learning unit for writing or teaching classes.  

~Sophia~