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Multimodal Text

This document discusses multimodal literacy and the importance of teaching it. Multimodal texts use combinations of modes like written language, images, sounds, gestures and more to convey meaning. Examples include picture books, textbooks, films and websites. Each mode uses unique resources to create meaning. It is important for young people to learn to understand and create multimodal texts as communication increasingly uses multimedia technologies. Teaching children about different modes and how to make meaning across complex texts helps them communicate effectively in today's world.

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Lavinia Cueto
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86 views

Multimodal Text

This document discusses multimodal literacy and the importance of teaching it. Multimodal texts use combinations of modes like written language, images, sounds, gestures and more to convey meaning. Examples include picture books, textbooks, films and websites. Each mode uses unique resources to create meaning. It is important for young people to learn to understand and create multimodal texts as communication increasingly uses multimedia technologies. Teaching children about different modes and how to make meaning across complex texts helps them communicate effectively in today's world.

Uploaded by

Lavinia Cueto
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Literacy Teaching Toolkit

Multimodal literacy
Many texts are multimodal, where meaning is communicated through combinations of two or more
modes. Modes include written language, spoken language, and patterns of meaning that are visual,
audio, gestural, tactile and spatial.

Multimodal texts
Multimodal texts include picture books, text books, graphic novels, comics, and posters, where  meaning
is conveyed to the reader through varying combinations of visual (still image) written language, and
spatial modes.

Digital multimodal texts, such as film, animation, slide shows, e-posters, digital stories, and web pages,
convey meaning through combinations of written and spoken language, visual (still and moving image),
audio, gestural and spatial modes.

Live multimodal texts, for example, dance, performance, and oral storytelling, convey meaning through
combinations of modes such as gestural, spatial, spoken language, and audio.

Each mode uses unique semiotic resources to create meaning (Kress, 2010). In a visual text, for
example, representation of people, objects, and places can be conveyed using choices of visual semiotic
resources such as line, shape, size, line and symbols, while written language would convey this meaning
through sentences using noun groups and adjectives (Callow, 2013) which are written or typed on paper
or a screen. (For further information, see Anstey and Bull, 2009; Callow, 2013; Cloonan, 2011, Kalantzis,
Cope, Chan, and Dalley-Trim, 2016.)

Why multimodal literacy is important


Young people need to be able to communicate effectively in an increasingly multimodal world. This
requires teaching children how to comprehend and compose meaning across diverse, rich, and potentially
complex, forms of multimodal text, and to do so using a range of different meaning modes.

As communication practices have become increasingly shaped by developments in information and


multimedia technologies, it is no longer possible for us to think about literacy solely as a linguistic
accomplishment (Jewitt, 2008, p. 241).

Multimodal is the combination of two or more of these modes to create meaning.

Most of the texts that we use are multimodal, including picture books, text books, graphic novels, films, e-
posters, web pages, and oral storytelling as they require different modes to be used to make meaning.

Each individual mode uses unique semiotic resources to create meaning (Kress, 2010) and teaching of
these needs to be explicit.

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Last Update: 29 August 2018

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