Writing a poem or an analysis of Shakespeare’s Orthello (1603) seem to be very conservative tasks
in our digitalized world. You might even think that writing an analysis is no longer part of the competencies students need to have in the 21st century, so why then still teach writing in class? The point is that writing is still crucial, and I claim that it is even more relevant than before. However, the question to ask is what writing means in our days and how it is and should be influenced by multiliteracies.
In the last years, it has become essential to communicate through all channels society uses. This is the
reason why the New London Group (1994) has defined the primary educational goal to prepare
students for their participation in work, private and public life. Since writing is one form of
communication, it is a highly important skill that needs to be addressed at this point.
Picking up the example in my introduction, it becomes evident that the variety of writing situations
has been further extended and thus should be adjusted to the writing happening outside of the
classroom. For the students of today it is not only important to summarize a text, but additionally to
be successful in email communication and chatting. Consequently, a good writer needs to have more
skills than before. He/she needs to be able to decide when formal or informal language and uses of
emojis are appropriate, but also needs cultural background knowledge and know-how about handling
digital media.
This means for us (as future teachers) that we need to think of the purpose of our writing task in
advance. Which skills do we want to foster? Are they part of the multiliteracies students need for their
integration into society? There are also two goals we have to think of. On the one hand, writing can
be used to document learning development and information gained in the lesson. We can, therefore,
include it as a tool of learning, e.g. the task of taking reasonable notes. If students are able to take
notes themselves, they show individual strategies of pinpointing significant information and
highlighting those aspects that are important to them. This is one skill they will need in order to develop
own approaches and opinions on topics of debates. On the other hand, writing can be a tool for
transferring ideas and thoughts to someone else. The focus then is on the communicative competence
through writing which is a basic competence required in all parts of society. Especially in current times
of the Covid-19 pandemic, many conversations take place digitally via chat and email. However, in both
situations writing is used for a higher goal, learning or communication, or even both which should be
made transparent for students. This leads us to the next point, the implementation of tasks.
Once we have defined our goal(s), it is important to provide an authentic situation that could occur
outside of the classroom to make its relevance clear to students. Why should we work on such a task?
What competencies will I work on that I can benefit from after school? Since multimodal media is what
students will face and already do, for example on the internet, appropriate tasks should provide
multimodal impulses too. Using a podcast or a video is one possible starting point for the following
writing phase. In this context, I especially want to emphasize the mass of facts and impressions that is
encountered through all different kinds of media. The overwhelmingness of information permitted
through an enormous number of channels can have an impact on one’s writing too. How should a
student be able to stick to the major points if he/she is distracted by numerous other sources whether
this is another digital media or the fullness of content when googling? Writing and its process should
, therefore, be even more integrated into English lessons by leading the class through all stages of the
writing process and offering scaffolding. This will help students to deal with possible distractions and
multimodal sources.
Last of all, the role of multiliteracies brings up another dimension important for writing in the
classroom: culture. Especially when communicating through writing and not speaking, it is inevitable
to have a general understanding and knowledge of diverse cultures to make communication effective
and successful. Therefore students should learn to prevent misunderstandings that are easily caused
as a result of the physical distance and experience writing as a form of intercultural experience that
nevertheless requires awareness of which language and style to use or not to use.
All in all, writing still needs to play a vital role in the foreign language classroom. The writing formats
are increasingly changing and thus writing tasks should be adapted to authentic situations outside of
the classroom. Multiliteracies require most diverse writing skills depending on the context and the goal
which need to be transmitted by teachers to students to prepare pupils for their own participation in
society.
