This article presents results from a case study which investigated how Norwegian English foreign language (EFL) learners, roughly aged 16-17, take action through redesigning a multimodal advertisement. Data was collected from a redesign task at the end of a 16-week intervention, in which three classes were introduced to critical visual literacy…

With the commodification of English education in East Asian societies, a robust advertising industry has arisen to attract consumers. In the project described here, I engaged in a critical content analysis of over 1000 advertisements for English educational products and services collected in Japan and Taiwan. My focus was on how social groups are…

This paper is concerned with multimodal literacy involving the different kinds of knowledge required to fully access texts with multiple semiotic resources used in reading comprehension test tasks. Such literacy requirements have not drawn researchers' attention to date, mainly because the foreign language teaching and testing project has…

Tertiary students from non-English speaking backgrounds are often required to undertake preparatory language courses. Whilst these programs help them achieve an operational level of academic English, their curricula do not explicitly promote the development of essential 21st century visual literacy skills. Understandings of visual literacy in…

Visual literacy is an important skill for students to have in order to interpret embedded messages on signs and in advertisements successfully. As advertisements today tend to feature iconic people or events that shaped the modern world, it is crucial to develop students' visual literacy skills so they can comprehend the intended messages. This…