Advertisements as Authentic Multimodal Texts: Bridging 21st Century Skills and English Skills Teaching Practice Divide

The essence of 21 century learning, with its newly important set of skills, is the emphasis on what students can do with knowledge they gain, rather than what units of knowledge they have. This implies that our students cannot do anything without learning the knowledge, thus they should learn about skills and content altogether and at the same time. This challenges us, EFL teachers, to
effectively and selectively teach both English skills and 21st century skills to the students. This paper explores the possibilities of
intertwining the teaching of critical, communication, and information literacy skills as 21st century skills with English literacy skills for
EFL university students. Advertisements are exploited in the literacy practice activities as authentic multimodal materials to bridge the gap possibly resulted by the integration of critical, information and communication  literacy  skills  into  literacy  activities, since these forms of information are authentic multimodal texts which are ubiquitous and never free from bias and power. The project-based activities with guided literacy instruction are designed to: elicit students" critical thinking skills in analyzing the content of advertisements; encourage students" communication skills by giving comments on the advertisements" situational purposes; and empower students" information literacy skills by choosing and producing their own advertisements as form of communication. Performance-based assessment is implemented to assist students when completing and performing their project-based assignment.