Literacy in a digital age

This chapter discusses the impact of digital technologies on notions of literacy and critically explores literacy as understood by the National Curriculum (sometimes referred to as ‘conventional literacy’ with a focus on developing reading, writing and spelling) in relation to ‘new literacies’ (relating to the production and reception of digital and multimodal artefacts and representations as social and situated practices). The chapter explores also related cultural practices of learners in everyday life and how they can be mapped on to school-based learning. The chapter goes on to exemplify how technology might be used to motivate learners to want to develop conventional literacy, i.e. learn to read and write. Finally, the attention turns to the impact of the affordances of digital technologies on literacy, with a particular focus on new practices of (multimodal) text production and, more specifically, around the use of copy-and-paste functions, i.e. the selection of text (snippets) and their re-use in new contexts. The chapter explores the implications of these new practices for (foreign) language teaching and learning.