Multiliteracies: Learning how to critically read the visual

The first stage of this presentation focuses on multiliteracies that foreground the visual. A pedagogical response, employing a visual methodology inclusive of critical tools such as: representation, discourse and intertextuality will be demonstrated. Participants’ will be involved in the 'reading' of visual texts such as billboards, banners and public notices selected from linguistically and culturally diverse global contexts. The second stage shares the outcomes of a final year module for undergraduate English Language teachers in Hong Kong in which visual aspects of a multiliteracies approach were studied. Students were introduced to critical analytic tools and were encouraged to use them in the construction of multimedia presentations. They were then asked to articulate how the critical tools were encoded in their texts so that their audience ‘got the message’. Finally the presenters propose that there are broad pedagogical implications accompanying the introduction of curriculum approaches such as multiliteracies for future English teaching in globalised contexts where the media and increasingly visual media are used to exert power. Learning to critically read such texts is about disruption, deconstruction and reconstruction within fields of identity politics, political economies and institutional cultures.