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Teaching Writing in the 21st Century Classroom

By Danah Hashem, MA/MAT in English, WIC graduate assistant


As educators, one of our primary goals is to equip
students with flexible and sophisticated literacy
skills that they can apply inside and outside of
our classrooms. We want students to enter future
studies and workplaces with a certain competence
in formulating and communicating their
thoughts. But what does it even mean to write
effectively in our current era of digital, globalized
communication and technological workspaces? What does it look like
to teach literacy skills to modern students in ways that prepare them
to be successful in todays society?
In their 2013 position statement, the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE) attempted to answer these questions by defining what
it means to be literate in the 21st century. Their definition pays close
attention to the ways in which technology has complicated the idea of
literacy, creating a need for students with multiple literacies who are
capable of meeting the diverse needs of todays society and culture.
Their definition explains that:
Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society
must be able to

Some Examples of
Multimodal Writing
Projects

PowerPoint Presentations
Posterboard Presentations
Photo Collage
Digital Storytelling
Infographic
Video Projects (such as a
remix or a commercial)
Audio Projects (such as a
radio essay or a podcast)
Blogs
Twitter Essay
Digital Interactive Timeline
Photoessay
Data Visualization
Website

Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;


Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships
with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
strengthen independent thought;
Design and share information for global communities to meet a
variety of purposes;
Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of
simultaneous information;
Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts1

I have bolded particular words in the quote above to demonstrate


the overall theme here and elsewhere, which is that writing is
increasingly relying on a variety of technologies and media. Texts that
rely on different kinds of media, multimedia texts, are comprised of
a combination of communication systems such as visuals, gestures,
the alphabet, sound, and speech. These different systems are referred
to as modes. In the words of semiotician Gunther Kress, a mode is

NCTE, The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies, National Council of Teachers of
English, February 2013, www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.
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Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 3

a resource for making meaning that enable


people to communicate and express themselves
in various ways.2 So, essentially, modes are
systems we use to make and share meaning.
According to this NCTE statement, teaching 21st
century literacy skills involves teaching students
about modes, how they function as vehicles of
communication, and how to choose from among
them to accomplish specific communicative goals.
Often times, teaching literacy skills is associated
with teaching students how to read and write
alphabetic, print texts. Many educators tend to
view alphabetic texts as the most academic and
rigorous form of scholarship. Multimodal texts
are commonly thought of as less intellectual, less
academic, and less scholarly. Yet, as the NCTE
organization notes, this is no longer the case.
Their definition of 21st century literacies statement
lists flexibility and fluency in multimodal texts and
textual design as necessary skills when defining
literacy in the modern age, suggesting that, at the
very least, a commonplace dismissal of all texts
that are not alphabetic is up for questioning.
In addition to necessary 21st century literacy
skills, there are other benefits to incorporating
multimodal work in the classroom. A few of these
include:

Teaching students how different modes interact


with one another and the audience equips them
with the ability to critically and meaningfully
analyze writing composed in any combination of
modes. 3

Teaching students to apply the practice of


rigorous and academic reading to multimodal
texts enables them to insightfully approach
a wide variety of works in disciplines
that commonly use modalities other than
the alphabet such as art, music, drama,
mathematics, and the sciences.
Offering students an opportunity to compose
multimodally is a fun and alternative way to
engage English language learners who might
otherwise have difficulty connecting with
and completing a writing assignment in the
alphabetic mode. Students who struggle with
English as a nonnative language may thrive
when given an assignment in which they can
express their ideas freely without the added
concern for grammar, academic language, and
spelling.

Multimodal work can respect, engage, and


attend to students learning differences. Asking
students to strategically communicate ideas in
modes that come naturally to them encourages
diverse academic identities. 4

The real world is multimodal. The social, career,


and recreational spheres of modern life are all
multimodal, featuring complex combinations
of sounds, images, and text. If we dont teach
our students to be smart consumers of the
information and entertainment that they are
bombarded with, they will struggle to navigate
the fast-paced culture in which they live.
Assigning challenging and rigorous analyses
of composer choices in multimodal writing as

Kress, Gunther, What is mode? in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis 2010, ed. Carey Jewitt (USA: Routledge, 2010), 54.
NCTE, Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies, National Council of Teachers of English, November 2005, www.ncte.org/positions/
statements/multimodalliteracies.
4
Rodrigue, Tanya K., An Epistemological Process for Multimodal Assignment Design, Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging
Pedagogies 3, no. 1 (2015): 372-373.
5
Murray, Joddy, Composing Multimodality, in Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook, ed. Claire Lutkewitte (Boston, MA: Bedford/St.
Martins Press, 2009).
2
3

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well as asking students to make those choices


in their own works helps our students become
smart, capable individuals who can successfully
navigate society. 5
The ways in which multimodal writing can be
brought into our classrooms are numerous and
oftentimes more accessible than it first seems.
It would be unrealistic and overwhelming to
suggest that educators everywhere overhaul
their lesson plans so that they rely entirely on
multimodal writing and communication. Much
more reasonably, educators can begin to slowly
incorporate these increasingly necessary skills into
their existing coursework, adding a multimodal inclass activity or a multimodal option for a project
to their lesson plans. Simple adjustments such as
asking students to compose a video or an audio
reflection instead of an alphabetic essay can teach
students to capitalize on the rich possibilities that
accompany the skilled use of technology and
multimodality in communication.
Because we as educators are not experts on
some of the technology that students might use
to compose multimodal work, it often seems
implausible that we would use those technologies
in the classroom. However, multimodality,
much like the current culture of technological
communication in which our students need to
operate, is not something to be mastered so
much as it is something to be explored. This
exploration can provide students and educators
the opportunity to learn together, discovering new
means for effective communication while openly
allowing for a lack of technological expertise.
Although the prospect of assigning multimodal
work can be intimidating, it also brings with it
the potential for deeply enriching and relevant
educational experiences that fosters truly literate
students.

classroom is not only limiting but insufficient in


the goal of fostering 21st century literacy skills.
Regardless of our general comfort level with the
idea, literacy for todays students means something
different than it has meant in the past. In order to
best serve students, educators in all fields need to
adapt expectations and classroom design to teach
this new understanding of literacy.
Join me next semester at the WIC brown bag
lunch event, Using Digital Writing Activities in
the Classroom for more information and ideas on
fostering digital literacy skills in your classes.
Bibliography
Kress, Gunther. What is mode? In The Routledge
Handbook of Multimodal Analysis 2010, edited by
Carey Jewitt, 54-67. USA: Routledge, 2010.
Murray, Joddy. Composing Multimodality. In
Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook,
edited by Claire Lutkewitte, 325-350. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martins Press, 2009.
NCTE. Position Statement on Multimodal
Literacies.National Council of Teachers of English.
last modified August 18, 2008. www.ncte.org/
positions/statements/multimodalliteracies.
NCTE, The NCTE Definition of 21st Century
Literacies. National Council of Teachers of English,
last modified February 2013. www.ncte.org/
positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.
Rodrigue, Tanya K. An Epistemological Process for
Multimodal Assignment Design. Journal of Global
Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies
3, no. 1 (2015): 372-373.

My point here is that the casual disregard for


texts that are composed in modes other than the
alphabetic may be based more on cultural biases
than on an accurate reflection of the 21st century
world. If this is true, it follows that the commonly
exclusive focus on alphabetic writing in the
Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 5

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