Abstract:

The concept of genre (Orlikowski & Yates, 1998; Swales, 1990) has evolved to reflect the traits in the new existing genres or ‘Cybergenres’ (Crowston & Williams, 2000; Askehave & Nielsen, 2005; Shepherd & Watters & Kennedy, 2004). The emergence of cybergenres has not only affected the genre-analysis field but also the language learning field. Indeed a static approach to cybergenres from a language learning perspective does not seem to be the most effective one, due to the dynamism of such genres. Bearing in mind these reflections, it seems obvious that what language teachers really need to understand of cybergenres is how various literacies, various cultural traditions, combine to make meanings that are more than the sum of what each could mean separately (Lemke, 2003). The aim of this paper is, therefore, to show how language teachers could approach cybergenres in order to design language learning tasks which include the training in the new multiliteracies. (Kress, 2003; Luzón, 2002; Villanueva & Luzón & Ruiz, 2008)

Keywords:

Genre, multiliteracies, cybergenre, cybertask.