Ten lessons from the five modes to making your own multimodal text — each with an analysis task and exam-style question.
Teaching focus: The written, visual, audio, gesture and spatial modes and how they combine.
Starter sentences: “The synergy of image and text…” · “The audio mode contributes…”
Activity: Capture a screen and label each mode you find.
Teaching focus: Layout, hierarchy, colour, font and composition as meanings.
Starter sentences: “The prominence given to…” · “White space directs attention to…”
Activity: Compare the graphical design of two contrasting websites.
Teaching focus: Navigation, hierarchy, branding and how a site builds trust and identity.
Starter sentences: “The navigation implies…” · “From its branding, the site…”
Activity: Deconstruct one website’s home page for identity, audience and rhetoric.
Teaching focus: How choice, scrolling and feedback make the user a co-constructor of the text.
Starter sentences: “By choosing to… the user…” · “The interface invites the visitor to…”
Activity: Test an interactive feature and record the choices it offers you.
Teaching focus: How narratives are built from image, audio and text over a digital medium.
Starter sentences: “Scrolling enacts … of the plot…” · “The soundtrack establishes…”
Activity: Watch a short digital story and map how each mode advances it.
Teaching focus: The construction of authenticity, seriality and community in blog and vlog texts.
Starter sentences: “The claimed intimacy of direct address…”
Activity: Study one vlogger’s content for techniques that build parasocial trust.
Teaching focus: Brevity, algorithm, virality and the engineered loops of social platforms.
Starter sentences: “Designed for the scroll…” · “The algorithm rewards…”
Activity: Analyse the design constraints of one platform post type.
Teaching focus: How links create meaning, structure argument and draw on the whole web.
Starter sentences: “The outbound link to… lends…” · “Following this link, the reader…”
Activity: Map the links in an article and note what each one implies.
Teaching focus: How digital texts move users to act — through calls, urgency and design.
Starter sentences: “The call-to-action is positioned…” · “Urgency is created by…”
Activity: A/B review two landing pages for their persuasive machinery.
Teaching focus: Planning, producing, and evaluating an original digital text against criteria.
Band 6 checklist: clear purpose, deliberate mode choices, coherent design, understanding of audience and context.
Activity: Design a short web page or digital story and evaluate it in writing.
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