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Multimodality in the English language classroom:

Literacy in the 21st century is now no longer regarded simply as the ability to use a language competently in a mono-cultural setting. Literacy today involves students knowing how to navigate across an increasingly complex communication landscape and to negotiate a range of contexts and patterns of intercultural meanings as well as the prevalence of multimodal texts.

Contemporary communication environment is characterised by multimodal meaning-making, that is the “multiplicities of media and modes”, as well as “increasing local diversity and global connectedness” (New London Group, 1996, p. 62) which necessitates a shift in the pedagogical approaches that are adopted by teachers. This is especially so in the digital age where a sole focus on language in literacy is no longer sufficient for the new workplace given that a revised sense of ‘competence’ is required. The recognition of social diversity also demands pedagogical approaches that engage with the transcultural and multicultural classroom. Issues of the day such as fake news and social justice concerns also need to be addressed in the literacy classroom.

Multimodality focuses on understanding how semiotic resources (visual, gestural, spatial, linguistic, and others) work and are organised. Multimodality in education adopts an expanded view of literacy to include the range of multimodal communicative practices which young people are involved in today's digital age. Multimodal pedagogies refer to the ways in which the teacher can design learning experiences using a range of multimodal resources. It involves teachers making design choices in the ways in which the curriculum content is expressed, arranged, and sequenced multimodally. Multimodal pedagogies also involve designing opportunities for students to explore and perform ideas and identities using a range of meaning-making resources. The teaching and learning activities often involve drawing from the students’ funds of knowledge and their lifeworld. With multimodal pedagogies, teachers orchestrate the learning process by weaving together a series of knowledge representations into a cohesive tapestry and in so doing make apt selection of meaning-making resources to design the students’ learning experience.

Adapted from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science

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