Digital Literacies for English Language Learners

Advances in digital communication technologies have led to important changes in the way that people read, write and communicate. New forms of representation in the digital context are increasingly hypertextual, multimodal, interactive and plurilingual. As a result of such developments, many scholars in language and literacy education have called for practitioners to rethink the curriculum and take such digital literacies into account. This chapter takes up this call and describes a digital literacies approach to English language teaching (ELT), which attempts to address: (1) new needs of English language learners (ELLs) in the digital age; (2) new learning contexts, in the form of globalized online affinity spaces, where ELLs can interact with other English speakers. The chapter describes a theoretical model for digital literacies, which sees the affordances of digital tools as enabling new ways of doing, meaning, relating, thinking and being. It then examines the kinds of informal learning opportunities available to ELLs in globalized online affinity spaces. Finally, the chapter describes approaches to incorporating digital literacies in the formal ELT curriculum, including: (1) structured participation in online affinity spaces; (2) embedding digital literacies in the language curriculum; (3) digital multimodal composing projects; (4) telecollaboration or virtual exchange projects.