Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 3

Teaching Writing in the 21st Century ClassroomBy 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 today’s 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 today’s society and culture. Their definition explains that: “Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to • 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 texts”1

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

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

1 NCTE, “The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies,” National Council of Teachers of English, February 2013, www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.

4 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

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:

2 Kress, Gunther, “What is mode?” in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis 2010, ed. Carey Jewitt (USA: Routledge, 2010), 54. 3 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. Martin’s Press, 2009).

• 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 don’t 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

Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 5

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 in-class 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.

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

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 today’s 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.

BibliographyKress, 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. Martin’s 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.