EDST5454 Chap.2 Multiliteracies and Oracy
Multiliteracies and Oracy
This chapter broadens literacy across social diversity and modes of representation. It treats linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial resources as purposeful design choices, then connects that framework to oracy. Learners need opportunities both to learn how to talk and to use talk for learning.
Dialogic teaching distributes reasoning beyond a narrow teacher initiation and evaluation pattern while keeping intellectual goals explicit.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Social diversity and multiple ways of making meaning
- 02
Linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes
- 03
Design, transformation and the affordances of each mode
- 04
Learning to talk and talking to learn
- 05
Dialogic teaching beyond initiation-response-evaluation
- 06
Mode choice, access and assessment of multimodal coherence
Worked example · free
Redesign a print explanation across modes
- 1Fix the knowledge goal as an evidence-based causal explanation.
- 1Compare paragraph, flow diagram and narrated sequence affordances.
- 1Teach talk moves for clarifying evidence and challenging causal links.
- 1Require transformation from diagram and oral rehearsal into a written public text.
- 1Assess conceptual accuracy, mode fit and the explanation of design choices.
Key terms
- Multiliteracies
- A framework attending to social diversity and multiple modes of contemporary meaning-making.
- Semiotic mode
- A socially organised resource such as language, image, sound, gesture or spatial arrangement.
- Affordance
- The possibilities and constraints a mode offers for representing and communicating meaning.
- Oracy
- The teachable capacity to use spoken interaction for communication, reasoning and participation.
- Dialogic teaching
- Teaching that develops ideas through purposeful exchange, building, challenge and justification.
- Mode transformation
- The process of remaking meaning from one mode or combination of modes into another.
- Critical framing
- Analysis that places a meaning-making practice within its social, cultural and power relations.
Multiliteracies and Oracy FAQ
Is multiliteracies just using more technology?
No. Multiliteracies includes social diversity and multiple modes, and those modes may be paper-based, live or digital. A printed comic and a performance can be multimodal, while a digital worksheet may remain mostly linguistic. The useful question is how modes carry meaning for a purpose and audience.
Why does oracy need explicit teaching?
Classrooms often assume learners already know how to explain, question, disagree, build on another idea and speak for an audience. Those expectations can advantage familiar speakers. Explicit modelling, rehearsal and structured dialogue make the repertoire available while giving learners a reason to refine it through authentic reasoning.
How should multimodal work be assessed?
Judge conceptual accuracy first, then examine how the modes interact and whether the learner can justify important choices. Technical polish or the number of modes should not substitute for meaning. Criteria can address audience, coherence, evidence, transformation and accessibility without rewarding access to expensive tools.
Assessment move
Create a five-mode table with linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial resources. For each mode, record one affordance, one possible barrier and one example of explicit teaching. Then take a familiar lesson and state its knowledge goal before redesigning it across two modes. Explain why the redesign is not simply more entertaining.
Rehearse the difference between learning to talk and talking to learn, and build a small bank of dialogue moves for clarification, connection, challenge and justification. In research notes, identify the specific mode, learner group and context studied rather than transferring findings to all multimodal learning.
In a proposal, write the audience, purpose, chosen modes, transitions, scaffolds and assessment evidence in sequence. If technology appears, justify it after the pedagogy. Finish by checking that learners are required to transform or coordinate meaning, not merely paste the same words into another format.
Record a short explanation of a concept and code each contribution by its function: initiate, clarify, connect, challenge, justify or summarise. Inspect whose ideas receive uptake and where the teacher closes discussion too quickly. Redesign the prompts, wait time and response roles so participation does not depend on speed.
Next, translate the same concept into a diagram and write a commentary explaining what the spatial arrangement reveals that the paragraph did not. Identify any meaning lost in translation and decide whether both modes are necessary. For an assessment, separate the conceptual criterion from performance confidence or production polish unless those are intended outcomes.
Add an access check for hearing, vision, language and technology, then specify how an equivalent route preserves the required transformation of meaning. Practise a rapid modal audit on an infographic, video and classroom explanation. For each, identify the dominant mode, the information carried elsewhere and one learner who could be excluded by the design.
Propose a scaffold that improves access without duplicating every mode or reducing the conceptual demand.
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