Multiliteracies and multimodal literacies are a comprehensive response to the mobile semiotics of contemporary society. Flows of people, images and ideas, have meant the impact is experienced globally as well as locally and contextually. Along with New Literacy Studies, multiliteracies framework has as its central focus a socially just and culturally inclusive curriculum. Further, informed by critical pedagogy and critical literacy, multiliteracies has, at its conceptual centre, a transformative pedagogy aimed at effective learning across social and cultural differences, and across different learning styles. To attend to the change in social futures, multiliteracies has, at its nexus, student knowledges, lived experiences and student centred resources.

Central to multiliteracies is the concept of Design. The New London Group indicates the numerous ways by which signification occurs. More recently, as Kalantzis and Cope (2005) describe it, “there is a nice ambiguity in the word ‘design’. Design can denote morphology or the sense of invisible inner structures or inherent relationships of cause and effect” (p. 41). Kalantzis and Cope (2005) use Design in a comprehensive manner to denote “agency” as the “stuff of the characteristically self-conscious pedagogical moves, teaching frameworks and organisational forms of education as we currently understand it” (p. 41). In brief, as Falk (2001) observes, for the New London Group, Design expresses “the active role of the literacy learner in constructing new meaning from existing resources” (p. 314). Because Design rejects isolated, abstract and decentralised learning, it demands “production of the new rather than replication of the old” (Kress, 2000, p. 141). In Design, the learner is actively creating and re-creating while having choices in learning that did not exist in traditional print-based models of literacy.

The modes or Design concepts are: linguistic, visual, audio, spatial and gestural; however, the New London Group do not perceive each of these literacies as singular and isolated from other literacies. For students who engage with the four knowledge processes there is deep understanding and proactive learning:

• Experiencing: through the known and the new, where the evidence data from the prior knowledge and life experience of the learner is combined with immersion in new knowledge and new experience in meaningful settings.

• Conceptualising: abstract concepts and theoretical synthesis by the process of naming and theorising. This enables the learner to define, apply concepts and comprehend the abstract generalised meanings in concepts and visual representations.

• Analysing: analysing, interpreting functions capably, through the comprehension of the role of knowledge and critically by analysing purpose and intentions.

• Applying: knowledge appropriately and creatively by understanding suitable situations to apply knowledge and extending it to create new knowledges.

IYER, Radha; LUKE, Carmen. Multimodal, Multiliteracies: Texts and Literacies for the 21st century. In: PULLEN, Darren L.; COLE, David R. Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education. Social Practice and the Global Classroom. Hershey and New York: ICI Global, 2010, p. 22. (Adapted).

After reading this passage on multiliteracies and design, choose the alternative that best conceptualizes those two words.

Read the abstract from na article titled “Social media pedagogy: Applying an interdisciplinary approach to teach multimodal critical digital literacy”.

Abstract

Social media permeates the daily lives of millennials, as they use it constantly for a variety of reasons. A significant contributing factor is the availability of social media through smartphones and mobile apps. This kind of immersive and complex media environment calls for a literacy pedagogy that prepares students to understand, engage with, and adapt to social media that are inevitably going to remain a part of their lives. Research into digital literacy/literacies has sought to address the development of tools and methods to aid college students in becoming more situated and adept digital citizens. This article extends the conceptualization and application of digital media literacy through the inclusion of a critical, multimodal, and interdisciplinary pedagogical approach. The paper illustrates that critical digital literacy drawing upon multimodal and interdisciplinary analysis is imperative in preparing students to manage the predominance of social media in their lives.

TALIB, Saman. Social media pedagogy: Applying an interdisciplinary approach to teach multimodal critical digital literacy. In E-Learning and Digital Media. Sage, 2018. Available at: journals.sagepub.com/home/ldm. Access on: Feb 12, 2026. DOI: 10.1177/2042753018756904.

This objective of the article as stated in the abstract is to

The EFL Students’ Critical Reading Skills across Cognitive Styles

[...] Considering the importance of having critical reading skills for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, the topic of developing of the students’ critical reading always has a prominent place among the researchers and educators. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the students’ critical reading ability in English language teaching (ELT) [...].

All of the studies reveal significant roles of critical reading ability on students’ success in academic study and its powerful effect on students’ critical thinking. More specifically, a study by Sultan et al. (2017) reveals that critical literacy approach had a significant effect on the pre-service language teachers’ critical reading skills, which include interpretation, analysis, making an inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation [...].

Moreover, a study conducted by Karabay (2015) finds that, when reading texts, critical readers are always analytical; especially when they take critical notes and underline important information in the texts. Similarly, Kobayashi (2007), far before the study conducted by Karabay (2015), also indicate that critical readers substantially produce critical notes while reading expository texts, comparing to the less-critical readers who relied much on making a summary of the texts.

Critical reading is a skeptical, careful, active, reflective, and analytical activity to judge the value of the text [...]. It is true that when reading texts, critical readers do not only grasp what is explicitly stated in the text but also go far beyond it using their high order thinking skills (HOTs) to tackle and evaluate the content of reading texts.

These skeptical and analytical skills are required because of the emergence of the internet and other media [...]. This suggests that critical reading should become a part of foreign language teaching and learning. The English teachers or instructors should design appropriate teaching activities which encourage the students to develop their critical skills in reading [...]. The critical reading skills are important for the students because it affects their critical thinking abilities which are required nowadays, and in turn, helping them to be critical citizens and critical readers.

A study by Zin & Eng (2014) indicates that critical reading ability can foster the students’ critical thinking habits. This is because reading is thinking and one cannot read without thinking [...]. Nevertheless, it is still difficult for the students to acquire the critical reading ability and big efforts and time are necessary to train the students to be critical. It is because the freshmen are sometimes not ready for the college academic tasks which require their critical thinking. Research carried out by Lisa (2008) confirms that many of the freshmen at the university level are not prepared for the demands of college reading, however, their critical reading skills are developed throughout the semester [...].

Available in: https://jurnalfaktarbiyah.iainkediri.ac.id/index.php/jeels/article/view/72. Acess on: Jan. 30, 2026.

According to the article,

Certain people from certain places (the Global North) in certain languages (overwhelmingly English) produce the vast amount of knowledge about language, second language learning, education, language policy, and so on, and make universal claims to the applicability of that knowledge to the rest of the world. This is not just vaguely inappropriate knowledge, but rather knowledge that seeks to colonize. To oppose this requires several kinds of action that can bring a strong element of renewal to a discipline that all too often speaks only to itself, and largely in English. A central part of this is a process of decolonization of knowledge and practices, of language and theories of second language acquisition, of language policies, and language in education. We need to systematically and thoroughly deconstruct cultural hegemony in our own discipline and beyond and enlist more and more scholars from especially developing Third World societies to participate in the construction or re-invention of various cultural frameworks of research including both aboriginal, native cultural and intellectual resource and local specific conditions, needs and aspirations.

Decolonizing applied linguistics suggests first of all the need to decolonize ‘language’– or the way that language is framed in linguistics and applied linguistics – aspart of any reclamation project. We can identify several key northern ideas about language that are at best inappropriate when applied to southern contexts and at worst are downright harmful. These include a legacy of considering languages in terms of cognitive, literate systems rather than embodied and embedded cultural processes; a tendency to reify languages as if they exist outside of human relations; and a set of assumptions about languages as repositories of knowledge that once lost, lead simultaneously to the loss of shared forms of culture and knowledge. Language reclamation itself can be understood as a process of decolonization both in terms of giving new life to a language that has been cast aside by processes of coloniality and modernity, and in terms of changing the ways in which language is understood (resisting the colonial archives of linguistic modernity). Decolonization from this point of view involves community needs and goals rather than top-down assumptions about grammatical fluency, and above all, community ontologies of language.

PENNYCOOK, Alastair; MACONI, Sinfree. Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 126-7.

After reading the excerpt, think about the possible relation between applied linguistics and language reclamation and choose the alternative that best associates them.

The chart taken from the chapter “The rise of multiliteracies” from a book titled Foundations of Multiliteracies visually conceptualizes multiliteracies. Observe the chart and them choose the definition that best completes the sentence: Multiliteracies is

Exploring digital multimodal text in EFL classroom: Transformed Practice in Multiliteracies Pedagogy

[...] In the twenty-first century, education is faced with the sophisticated technology and advance communication because people are now living in a global society with increasingly different local contexts. Students have discovered various ways of using media to communicate, collaborate, and create in the digital space. Much research has been done on multiliteracies pedagogy and a substantial number of studies have investigated multimodal texts [...].

This new environment changes the concept of text from reading and writing to be multimodal. Consequently, education needs to improve the quality of leaners that have high level of creativity to understand multimodal text. Multimodalities are always integrated with the advanced technology where information comes from many sources in different forms [...]. Not only do English teachers need to include the students with all their diversities in situated contexts, but they also need to engage them in multiliteracies.

Multiliteracies pedagogy concerned with the use of multimodal layers of learners’ world in the classroom to engage students with the tools and technology that they are already familiar with. It has been considered that multiliteracies pedagogy is a meaningful way that can effectively engage students in teaching and learning practice by offering four benefits. First, it strengthens the relationship between teacher and students. Second, it increases the inclusivity for multiplicity. Third, it develops performances of literacy practices. Last, it creates positive classroom community. The concept of multiliteracies pedagogy is has four major components which can be implemented in teaching practices. Those components are situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. Every component has its important role in teaching and learning practice. They do not stand in linear hierarchy, but each of them can happen repeatedly, randomly, or simultaneously in complex ways [...].

Situated practice means the involvement of meaningful practices that able to relate to students’ experience and background. Through situated practice, teacher needs to construct the students’ life world experience and putting the meaning-making process in the real-world context. Overt instruction is defined as an active interaction between teacher and students that helps students to understand what they learn. Critical framing is similar with analyzing the social and cultural meaning of texts by assessing particular designs of meaning. Transformed practice is transferring the previous design to create a new design of text in a different context and cultural site. With transformed practice, students are expected to apply the knowledge they gained (from situated practice, overt instruction, and critical framing) appropriately and creatively. This involves activities such as writing, drawing, problem-solving [...].

Available in: https://journal.ipm2kpe.or.id/index.php/LEEA/article/view/1416. Acess on: Feb. 10, 2026. (Adapted).

The article affirms that

Attitudes to classroom conversation and casual chat have varied over the years. In the heyday of audiolingualism, one writer, Louis Alexander, warned that the traditional conversation lesson is of no value at all if the student is not ready for it. The student must first be trained to use patterns in carefully graded aural-oral drills. Only in this way will he finally learn to speak.The chat stage of the lesson, if it occurred at all, was simply there as a curtain raiser to the main event – the controlled practice of sentence patterns. Until recently, one London language school was still advising its students that the teacher and the student must not chat during the lesson. They must only ask and answer the questions in the book. Chatting is a waste of time. Such a view sits uncomfortably with the finding that conversation, i.e. casual talk that is primarily interpersonal, is by far the most common and the most widespread function of speaking. Moreover, there is a school of thought that argues that, in L1 acquisition, the development of conversational skills precedes the development of language itself. As Evelyn Hatch put it, language learning evolves out oflearning how to carry on conversations, i.e. out of learning how to communicate. By extension, it has been argued that conversation in English as second or foreign language is not the result of language learning, but it is the site where learning occurs. lt is also, of course, a fact that many language learners feel that their most urgent need is to develop conversational competence, and they regularly choose conversation as their principal objective when answering needs analysis surveys. For this reason, many language schools offer conversation classes as a way of complementing more traditional, grammar-focused, classes. However, these offer a challenge to teachers and course designers since it is difficult to plan or programme something as inherently unstructured and spontaneous as casual conversation. As one writer puts it, genuine conversational interactions cannot be the outcome of planned lesson agendas, they have to emerge - and so, by definition, cannot be planned. One way that teachers get round this is to organize conversation classes around a set of themes. Ideally, these should be negotiated with the learners in advance, through the use of a questionnaire or by means of a consensus debate. Themerelated texts can be used to trigger conversation, either in open class or in groups. Or individual students take turns to make a short presentation on the pre-selected topic, which is then followed by open discussion. Pre-planned lesson content can take the form of teaching useful conversational formulas and routines, such as how to open and dose conversations, how to interrupt, change the subject, ask for clarification, and so on.

THORNBURY, Scott. How to Teach Speaking. Cambridge: Longman, 2005, pp. 110-1. (Adapted).

In this excerpt, the author states that “By extension, it has been argued that conversation in English as second or foreign language is not the result of language learning, but it is the site where learning occurs”.

After reading the passage as a whole, choose the best alternative that explains how to cope with this matter.

The effect of teaching Structural Discourse Markers in an EFL classroom setting

[...] Recent studies in corpus linguistics have examined specific aspects of spoken grammar particularly in unplanned speech. According to McCarthy and Carter (2001), spoken grammars have uniquely special qualities that distinguish them from written ones [...]. In spoken discourse, according to Fung and Carter (2007), the amount and frequency of DM use is significant in comparison to the use of other forms because they serve important interpersonal functions.

Therefore, DMs act as influential interactional features rather than having a purely grammatical function. One of the most important features of DMs is to constitute and organize talk [...]. There is acknowledgement that DMs have a pragmatic meaning in discourse and consequently play a significant role in speakers’ pragmatic competence because they contribute to the pragmatic meaning of utterances. Thus, there is the view that DMs contribute to the interpretation of an utterance rather than to its propositional content [...].

There are a limited number of studies conducted on the instruction of DMs in EFL contexts. All studies revealed similar findings, namely explicit instruction has a positive impact on learners’ production. The main difference being that each study focused on a different genre: writing skills, oral production and listening comprehension, respectively. In all these studies the addition of a post-test would have been beneficial to measure the long-lasting effects of teaching DMs on learners’ acquisition.

Rahimi and Riasati (2012) stated that using DMs will help learners to perform better in spoken skills. In English as a Second Language context (ESL) Jones (2009) carried out a small-scale study with two groups, both of which were given the same DMs using two different teaching approaches: illustration, interaction and induction (III) and presentation, practice and production (PPP). The results demonstrated that PPP had a considerable effect on learners’ use of the taught DMs [...].

Available in: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1101735.pdf. Acess on: Feb. 2, 2026.

According to the text’s perspective,

Current Perspectives on Teaching World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca

[...] There are three possible interpretations of the expression “World Englishes”. Firstly, it serves as an “umbrella label” covering all varieties of English worldwide and the different approaches used to describe and analyze them. Secondly, it is used in a narrower sense to refer to the so-called new Englishes in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean (Kachru’s outer circle). [...] Thirdly, it is used to represent the pluricentric approach to the study of English associated with Kachru and his colleagues, and often referred to as the Kachruvian approach, although there is considerable overlap between this and the second interpretation of the term. The first use is also sometimes represented by other terms, including World English (i.e., in the singular), international English(es), and global English(es), while the second is in fact more commonly represented by the terms nativized, indigenized, institutionalized, and new Englishes or English as a second language. And still other terms are currently in circulation [...]. Despite the range of interpretations of the term “World Englishes” and its alternatives, the links between them are so strong, and the field now so well established, that there seems to be little confusion over the intended reference.

The same cannot be said, by contrast, for ELF, despite Larry Smith’s visionary work on English as an international language dating way back to the 1970s and 1980s. One complication for ELF is the fact that “International English” is sometimes used as shorthand for “English as an international language”, or EIL, itself an alternative term for ELF. Used in this way, it can be misleading because it suggests that there is one clearly distinguishable, codified, and unitary variety called International English, which is certainly not the case. “International English” is used to refer to the local Englishes of those non–mother tongue countries where it has an intranational institutionalized role, although some researchers also include the mother tongue English countries (Kachru’s inner circle) in their definitions. On the other hand, “International English” is also used in another sense to refer to the use of English as a means of international communication across national and linguistic boundaries (primarily, but not exclusively, across the countries of Kachru’s expanding circle). These two meanings, as Seidlhofer (2004) observes, are therefore in “complementary distribution”. It is because of the potential for confusion of the word “international” that ELF researchers prefer the term “English as a lingua franca” to “English as an international language”, although to add to the confusion, both terms are currently in use.

There is considerable overlap between ELF (English as a Lingua franca) users and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, partly because many of those who start out thinking they are learning English as a foreign language end up using it as a lingua franca.

A further problem relates to the so-called phenomenon of “World Standard (Spoken) English” (W(S)SE). This is a hypothetical, monolithic form of English that scholars such as Crystal (e.g., 2003), Görlach (e.g., 1990), and McArthur (e.g., 1987, 1998) believe is developing of its own accord, although Crystal (2003) considers that US. English does seem likely to be the most influential in its development. This form recalls Quirk’s (1985) “single monochrome standard form”, based on the native speaker English that he advocates for nonnative speakers of English regardless of their communicative context [...].

Available in: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255669551_Current_Perspectives_on_Teaching_World_Englishes_and_English_as_a_Lingua_Franca. Acess on: Feb. 3, 2026.

The text states that

In the end, weaving a meaningful narrative using music, images, video, text, and voice really made the assignment worthwhile. The video editing and text creation were important aspects of that process, but it is the people who watch the film — those who may not already love martial arts or understand why or how it came to the States — whom I kept in the forefront of my mind during the composition process. The struggle to accurately represent the views of others forced me to think critically about the way the film would be received and therefore I had to think critically about the various media I was collecting and composing for the documentary. As part of being able to choose my own topic and interview people I knew (and some I didn’t know that well), I learned that it’s important to frame others’ comments in ways that are fair to them while still choosing clips that are interesting to read or see. Ethics became a bigger concern when I knew the people whose words were being represented in my documentary. That’s something that may be more difficult to relay (to students, to audiences) when you’re dealing with impersonal texts. The creation of a research proposal for the documentary — while not a lot of people’s idea of a good time — was a great learning experience that helped me foresee the ethical choices I had to make in the media I used. The proposal allowed me to put what were just ideas down on paper in a way that could be systematically useful to both my professor and me. Even in a narrative text, the research you do can and should change the direction of that text. If I had been unflinching in my drive to sell my message, it is likely that the significance of the message itself would be lost. One of the biggest lessons I took away from this project was that being given more power over my education (i.e., choosing the genre, focus, and media for my assignments) gives me more motivation to perform. It’s something that I knew before but that was emphasized by this assignment. I liked all the other classes I took that semester, but I found myself worrying and working on the documentary in preference to other classes. Also, the assignments that led up to the documentary work focused on one aspect of the documentary process and were great preparation for the final project. For me, the introduction to technologies (such as the audio-editing software) was unnecessary because I’ve worked with them my whole life, but I can see how it was important to other members of the class, and I was able to help others who needed it if I already knew how to do a particular assignment or task. In the end, the sequence of individual media assignments leading up to our documentary research proposal, storyboard, interviews, and choices in editing the media clips provided me with a process in which I could understand how to ethically compose a multimedia text for a specific audience and purpose.

BALL, Cheryl E.; BOWEN, Tia Scoffield and FENN, Tyrell Brent. Genre and Transfer in a Multimodal Composition Class. In: BOWEN, Tracey; WHITHAUS, Carl (Eds.). Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013 pp. 20-1.

In this fragment of text you will find a report from an English student named Tyrell about his report on ending a course in digital genres. After reading the report, choose the sentence from the text that may represent the concept of ‘agency’ in practice as it relates to digital genres, multiliteracy and technology.