Teaching Multimodal Literacy in English as a Foreign Language

Developing literacy in English can no longer be thought of as learning only language to communicate meanings. The role of images in our everyday environment is increasingly prominent. The ways in which language is used is changing in combination with images to construct meanings. In Teaching Multimodal Literacy in English as a Foreign Language, the multimodal nature of contemporary 'Englishes' in conventional and computer-based formats, informs the practical teaching/learning experiences of students. This book introduces a theoretical framework incorporating functional visual and verbal grammar as a basis for teaching multimodal literacy in English and includes practical illustrations of teaching/learning activities for learners from the early years of schooling to adult education. The emphasis throughout is on the intercultural understanding needed by the learner to comprehend and compose multimodal texts in the social and cultural contexts of English as a foreign language. The book also acknowledges the increasing integration of sound effects, music, gesture and spatial meanings, and digital rhetorical features of hyperlinks, windows, split screens and other semiotic resources in electronic texts.