Unit 6 – Literacy Skills

Literacy used to mean reading and writing. For many teachers, that’s still the default definition. But the reality in today’s classrooms—especially if you are teaching English as a second, third, or fourth language—is much more layered. You are not just teaching the mechanics of a language; you are guiding learners into the culture of that language, particularly its academic and professional culture. The goal is not simply to decode and encode English words, but to help students participate in contexts where language operates as a tool of power, identity, and opportunity. Done well, this work enfranchises learners and softens the edges of cultural imperialism that can creep in unexamined.

Henry Jenkins’ framework for “new media literacies” remains relevant in 2025, but the social, cultural, and technological conditions around them have evolved. Many of these literacies are refinements of familiar “soft skills” and habits of mind—ones you may already be building through task-based methods like those in Unit 4. Others are products of an age where personal technology is woven into nearly every act of communication. While Unit 7 will explore how to cultivate these literacies through mobile and digital tools, this chapter stays focused on the concepts themselves—what they mean, why they matter, and how they play out in the Korean EFL classroom.

In Korea, as elsewhere, cultural attitudes shape how easily each literacy takes root. Play, for instance, remains a suspicious concept in formal learning spaces. The prevailing mindset is that play is frivolous; if you are playing, you aren’t learning. Convincing colleagues, parents, and even students themselves that play can be a mode of problem-solving takes patience and a clear explanation of the learning goals. Performance, too, can be tricky. The fear of losing face keeps many students from risking mistakes in public presentations or role plays. You can expect initial resistance, though small, low-stakes showcases can gradually warm learners to the idea.

Simulation, on the other hand, aligns nicely with local preferences. Students may be shy about performing for an audience, but they enjoy assuming roles in structured scenarios—especially those that mirror real-world teamwork. These give them an anchor for language and a safe space for experimentation. Appropriation, or remixing existing content, is less straightforward. With plagiarism so normalized, breaking old habits and instilling citation awareness can feel like unlearning before learning. Here, discussion is essential: Who made this? How long did it take? Who pays the cost when it’s “free”?

Multitasking often gets a bad reputation, but in a language classroom, it can be harnessed productively. Breaking a lesson into complementary mini-tasks—some oral, some written, some listening—allows students to scan for what they know and circle back to what they don’t, reinforcing learning through repetition. Distributed cognition, meanwhile, tends to lag in the Korean EFL setting; students are great at using digital tools for their life but don't always transfer this to their formal learning practices. Many students don’t yet recognize that tools can extend their cognitive reach. When you introduce, say, the full functions of an e-dictionary, or show how to embed audio into a slide deck, you often see sudden jumps in the complexity and accuracy of their work.

Some literacies mesh almost effortlessly with Korean cultural norms. Collective intelligence—pooling knowledge for shared benefit—is already embedded in a collectivist worldview. Negotiation, too, thrives here: given permission and encouragement, learners listen respectfully, process alternative perspectives, and navigate differences with patience. These skills, rooted in their L1 academic culture, transfer well into English learning. Judgment, however, remains underdeveloped. The mere fact that something is in English can lend it unearned credibility. You’ll need to model skepticism, walking students through questions of reliability and bias.

Other skills, like transmedia navigation, vary widely among students. Some leap easily from text to video to diagram without losing track of the narrative. Others, often those with less digital exposure, lose their bearings when shifting media. Check out the examples at the end of this chapter for some ways to help learners make this adjustment. Networking, too, often stops at the descriptive level: students can share what they’ve found, but rarely analyze or synthesize it deeply. Here, your own process of inquiry becomes the best teaching tool—showing how you connect, reshape, and redistribute knowledge.

In 2025, we should also acknowledge a few literacies that have grown in importance since Jenkins’ original list. Algorithmic awareness—understanding that search results, news feeds, and even learning recommendations are filtered by unseen systems—has become part of digital citizenship. Attention management is now essential in an era of constant notifications and media switching, helping learners recognize and control where their focus goes. And ethical reasoning—weighing cultural, social, and moral factors when creating or sharing content—adds a needed dimension to discussions about authenticity and respect. 

Finally, there is critical literacy: the active analysis of texts, images, and cultural messages. This is not about finding the “right” answer, but about asking: Whose voice is speaking? Who is silent? What assumptions are at work? Korean EFL materials, like most, carry their share of stereotypes, omissions, and biases—sometimes about gender, sometimes about race, nationality, or social class. Addressing these moments requires tact but also courage. And in many Korean classrooms, you may be one of the few visible minorities, which offers its own perspective on belonging and difference. My students occasionally act as if I am invisible, looking to their peers for translations in order to answer me. I usually shut this down by telling them I am a person, and to address me, even in Korean, instead of ignoring or looking past me, thus erasing me because I am a foreigner speaking English. I tell them I am hurt, I feel disrespected, I feel alone when they do that. This helps us connect and for them to think about their priorities when communicating. Communicating is interpersonal; yet much of their English language learning has been competitively embedded in standardized testing, not something that is really for human engagement. 

As you work through these literacies, keep asking yourself: Which of these do my students already practice in Korean? Which transfer smoothly into English? Which require unlearning, and which simply need space to flourish? In the next unit, we’ll see how these abstract literacies take shape through mobile learning—portable, interactive, and increasingly central to students’ everyday worlds.

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Some Examples

In today’s classrooms, students navigate a world overflowing with information, media messages, and digital interactions. As educators, our task is not only to teach content, but also to help students develop the literacies they need to participate thoughtfully, ethically, and effectively in that world. In this unit, we explored information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy — three interconnected skill sets that can shape how students learn, evaluate, and communicate.

Information Literacy: Finding and Evaluating What’s Out There

Information literacy is the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively. It’s not just about “Googling better” — it’s about knowing where to look, how to recognize reliable sources, and how to question what you find. In an age where misinformation spreads as quickly as truth, students need to be detectives as much as learners.

In a teaching context, this might mean guiding students through the process of comparing multiple sources, checking for bias, and identifying gaps in knowledge. Even without technology, we can help students practice these skills.

• Offline example: Bring in three different print resources about the same topic — perhaps a textbook excerpt, a magazine article, and a pamphlet. Have students compare what’s included, what’s left out, and how the tone or perspective shifts.

The goal here is not to make students cynical, but to help them become discerning — able to trust sources for good reasons and reject them for equally good ones.

Media Literacy: Reading Between the Lines of What’s Shown

Media literacy is the ability to analyze, evaluate, and even create media messages. Every image, video, or headline has a perspective — and often, a purpose. This literacy is about unpacking those layers.

Students may not realize how much framing, editing, and design influence what they see and believe. In a digital setting, this might mean deconstructing an online ad or social media post; in a non-digital setting, it can be just as powerful to work with printed media.

• Offline example: Choose a series of advertisements from magazines or newspapers and have students identify the implied audience, emotional appeals, and underlying values. Then, challenge them to redesign the ad to target a completely different audience.

By looking at media critically, students begin to see that representation is never neutral, and that they, too, can make intentional choices when they create media.

Digital Literacy: Navigating Tools, Spaces, and Etiquette

Digital literacy goes beyond simply knowing how to use devices or software. It’s about understanding digital tools’ potential and limitations, using them responsibly, and being aware of the norms and expectations of online communities.

For many students, this literacy is learned informally — picking up habits and shortcuts from peers or influencers — but that doesn’t always lead to safe, ethical, or efficient practices. Teachers can model intentional use of digital spaces, from protecting personal data to balancing screen time with other learning modes.

• Offline example: Without using computers, ask students to create a “digital etiquette” skit. They can role-play situations such as responding to an email from a teacher, disagreeing respectfully in an online forum, or crediting someone else’s work. This lets them explore the concepts in a hands-on, face-to-face way before applying them online.

Pulling It Together in the Classroom

While each literacy has its own focus, they overlap in practice. A single lesson can touch on all three — for example, a research project that requires students to find credible information (information literacy), assess and cite media sources (media literacy), and present their findings via an online slideshow (digital literacy).

The trick is not to treat these literacies as “add-ons,” but to weave them into everyday teaching. They are not separate from language learning, history lessons, or science projects — they are the connective tissue that shapes how students engage with the world.

In Unit 7, we’ll move from the broad picture of literacies into the more specific terrain of mobile teaching and learning, exploring how smartphones and tablets — tools that many students already carry — can become part of our teaching toolkit.

Find more chapters of Prof Dev 4 EFL here.