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

The main goal of multiliteracies is to ensure, that every student can benefit from education and
thus participate fully in various social situations. This aim does, apart from the aspect of
speaking, affect the aspect of writing as well. Especially in the 21st century, writing has become
more complex regarding its multimodality. In school, students still predominantly write with a
pen on paper. In their spare time, however, writing mostly takes place on a digital level.
Students communicate with others on social media, write text messages to friends and fellow
students, or chat with others when playing video games. A lot of that communication does not
happen in the students´ mother tongue. Rather, it is a multicultural, linguistically diverse
communication. Students from all over the world try to communicate with each other as well
as possible. With that in mind, the foreign language classroom has to cover various diverse
aspects that nowadays come along with writing. Regarding multiliteracies, writing often affects
visual literacy, digital literacy, reflective literacy, and, as already mentioned, multimodal
literacy. Not all of these literacies are being covered every single time that students write. Still,
almost every text that a student draft is somehow multilateral. To ensure that students can
fully participate in social communication, teachers must have the diversity of students´ writing
in mind. In my opinion, writing has become highly multilateral and it is up to us as teachers to
ensure, that every aspect is being covered and dealt with in class.
-Isabella