Multimodal literacy and language testing: Visual and intersemiotic literacy indicators of reading comprehension texts

Abstract

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 primarily focussed on the verbal features of reading comprehension texts. Drawing on data from the Greek National Foreign Language Exams (known with the acronym KPG) – one of the few high-stakes examination systems which use multimodal reading comprehension texts – the paper approaches reading comprehension as a meaning-making process highly dependent on both image and language used in test tasks and the relations between them (i.e. intersemiosis). Working mainly within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this study has attempted a systematic description of the visual and intersemiotic literacy indicators of 86 multimodal media texts used in KPG reading comprehension test tasks. For the SFL-oriented multimodal discourse analysis, Tan et al.’s categories of system choices suggested for the analysis of different types of multimodal media texts, and the Multimodal Analysis Image (MMA) interactive software program were used.

Keywords:

• Multimodal literacy
• reading comprehension text
• visual literacy indicators
• intersemiotic literacy indicators
• image
• image-writing relations
• large-scales language examinations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and valuable feedback and Associate Professor Bessie Mitsikopoulou for her thoughtful suggestions for improvement on an earlier version of this paper. Moreover, I am grateful to Professor Emerita Bessie Dendrinos, supervisor of my PhD thesis, for our insightful discussions on my PhD research from which part of this publication stems and for involving me in the project entitled “Differentiated and Graded National Foreign Language Exams” (DiaPEG), as well as the Hellenic Ministry of Education for offering free access to the KPG exams past papers through its website https://rcel2.enl.uoa.gr/kpg/en_index.htm.

Notes

1 In line with Bezemer et al. (2012, p. 3) who use the term ‘educator’ “metonymically to refer to all those involved in the making of the text”, including test item writers and exam preparation material developers.

2 Insights into differences between different CEFR levels have been presented in the form of level-specific profiles in Karatza (2017). In the present study, B1, B2 and C1 source texts are approached as a set of data and only rarely the author addresses inter-level differences in the presentation of findings.

3 A detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative findings is provided in Karatza (2017).

4 Verbal processes had been extensively examined in the category of Grammar at Text Level for the purposes of the author’s broader research (Karatza, 2017). Each verb had been classified according to Halliday’s (1985) Processes (e.g., MATERIAL PROCESSES, RELATIONAL PROCESSES), mapped onto Tan et al.’s (2012) system choices of Tan et al.’s (2012) GRAMMAR AT TEXT LEVEL category of Verbs.

5 The glossary of Sindoni et al. (2019, p. 105) states that in multimodal studies the term affordance “has been used to define the material and cultural limitations and potentials of a meaning-making resource”.

6 ‘Meaning potential’ is a concept originally developed by the linguist Halliday viewing grammar as a system of options and the speaker as having the potential to ‘mean’ (Halliday, 1978). In multimodality, it “is used to describe the socially-accumulated past uses of a semiotic resource, upon which we draw both to produce our own meanings and to interpret the meanings made by others” (Sindoni et al., 2019, p. 108).

7 See also Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2007, pp. 114-54) social interaction, distance and relation.

8 See also Royce’s (2007, p. 41) intersemiotic categories of Salience on the page and Information Valuation on the page.