MULTILITERACY ADVANCES AND MULTIMODAL CHALLENGES IN ELT ENVIRONMENTS

Educators from different areas have long been reporting the need for new literacy skills to meet the requirements of the changing semiotic landscape of the 21st century. in particular exponents from the New Literacy Movement have consistently used the term ‘multiliteracies’ to refer to the competences needed in order to actively participate in today's emergent forms of new media. The present volume addresses the need for new forms of pedagogy that empower learners in a world dominated by a multiplicity of discourses, where the textual is closely into intertwined with the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioural and so on. Against this backdrop, the volume also aims to foster learners’ capability to analyse visual and verbal means of the communication in a critical discourse perspective that makes explicit how verbal and non-verbal choices privilege certain viewpoints and affect and/or silence alternative constructions of ‘reality’. The volume presents the results of research carried out within the digital classroom environment and is thus directed to academics and secondary foreign language school teachers and educational authorities alike since it also deals with best practices in teaching.