ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the example of a multimodal student genre to illustrate the need for attention, considers possible ways to analyse multimodal texts and ways that students can be supported in learning about how images may best be used to express meaning. Social semiotic multimodal analysis considers images in the light of ideational, interpersonal and compositional meaning, thus offering a complex and nuanced analysis of images. The chapter suggests that implications for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching of multimodality and visual meaning in student texts, using the builders’ diary as an example. It focuses on implications for ESP teaching and ways to support student acquisition of visual literacy. A number of studies have used G. Kress and T. van Leeuwen’s social semiotic tradition of multimodality to consider intersemiotic relations, that is, how images and text work together in making meaning.
