Sessions

Re-envisioning ELT Through the Lens of Digital Literacies

New technologies have become pervasive in the way people live, learn and communicate, challenging our values and norms in language education and literacy. With the pandemic exposing existing digital gaps and divisions, there is now both the urgency and the momentum among language educators to embrace new technologies. However, is technology alone really the answer? This plenary will re-envision English Language Teaching through the lens of digital literacies. It will argue that as communication is becoming increasingly multimodal, language students need new literacies to read, listen, view, comprehend, and critique complex information online. Language education cannot ignore the extensive changes to literacy that take place in this multimodal world and assume a key role in helping students to navigate it. This will lead to a final discussion in which we will attempt to draw some practical conclusions about the way forward. Sophia Mavridi is a Digital Learning Specialist & Lecturer in English Language Learning at De Montfort University (UK). Her research focuses on online learning and the increasingly important role of digital literacies in language education. As a consultant, Sophia supports institutions and teachers to integrate technology in a pedagogically sound way and has trained for major organisations around the world. She is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and the joint-coordinator of the IATEFL Learning Technologies Special Interest Group. Her latest publications are 'English for 21st Century Skills' (Express Publishing, 2020) and 'Digital Innovations and Research in Language Learning' (IATEFL, 2020), both of which reflect her keen interest in innovative pedagogies in language education.