CHAPTER 5:

Creation and
Production
of
Multimodal
TextReported by:
Jodi Marielet C. Eufracio
 What is
Multimodal
Text?
 Multimodal texts combine two
or more modes such as written
language, spoken language, visual (still
and moving image), audio, gestural,
and spatial meaning. Their creation
can be of any medium: paper, digital,
live or transmedia.
Transmedia
- where the story is narrated using multiple
delivery channels by means of a combination of
media platforms, for instance, book, comics,
magazine, films, web series, and video game
mediums all working as part of the same story.
- logical relations between these media
extensions, which seek to add something to the story
as it moves from one medium to another.
Examples of Multimodal Text
Examples of Multimodal Text
 Examples of Texts to Create
• Simple multimodal texts include comics/graphic novels, picture
books, newspapers, brochures, print advertisements, posters,
storyboards, digital slide presentations (e.g. PowerPoint), e-
posters, e-books, and social media. Meaning is conveyed to the
reader through varying combinations of written language, visual,
gestural, and spatial modes.
• Complex digital multimodal texts include live-action films,
animations, digital stories, web pages, book trailers,
documentaries, music videos. Meaning is conveyed through
dynamic combinations of various modes across written and
spoken language, visual (still and moving image), audio, gesture
(acting), and spatial semiotic resources. Producing these texts
also requires skills with more sophisticated digital
communication technologies.
 To create a digital animation, for example,
which is a complex-meaning design process, you are
required to do a critical arrangement of a
combination of “modes” (such as image, movement,
sound, spatial design, gesture, and language). The
process of constructing such a text is a “cross-
disciplinary process” because it involves the use of
both digital information technologies and the arts
(media, music, drama, visual, arts and design) to
bring meaning to life.
• The text you make is a literacy object because it
displays your ability to express meaning. Literacy
includes making meaning by using varied texts
available through the highly accessible information
and multimedia technologies.
• You construct meaning by creating your own
expression of that meaning or idea. The kind of
expression empowers you because you are able not
only to understand the idea but also to talk about it.
 The method of gathering materials is merely
copying and pasting. But during this process of
collecting the materials, you need to adapt and
rearrange the materials to suit your own purpose of
creating the multimodal text. But it could not be just
copying or pasting, what Ryberg (2007) has identified it
as “patchworking” in his dissertation.
• You do “patchworking” when you exploit certain threads in the
materials you have gathered from various sources and stitch these
together to create your own “patchwork” and your own particular
understanding of the materials.

• In other words, you reconceptualize the materials you have collected

from various sites to serve your own purpose of presenting them in
multimodal text in a classroom setting.

• If you use this patchworking, be sure to acknowledge all your

sources or you will be guilty of plagiarism.
 To effectively design and communicate
meaning through such rich and potentially complex
sources of materials, you have to extend your
multimodal literacy knowledge and skills. A quality
multimodal composition requires new literacy design
skills and knowledge that will enable you to make
informed choices within and across the available
communication modes and effectively construct
meaning out of them.
Why teaching creating Multimodal Texts is
important?

Student authors need to be able to effectively create

multimodal texts for different purposes and audiences, with accuracy,
fluency, and imagination. To do this, students need to know how meaning
is conveyed through the various modes used in the text, as well as how
multiple modes work together in different ways to convey the story or the
information to be communicated.

Students need to know how to creatively and purposefully

choose how different modes might convey particular meaning at
different times in their texts, and how to manipulate the various
combinations of different modes across the whole text to best tell their
story.
THANK
YOU!