Expanding Perspectives for Comprehending Visual Images in Multimodal Texts

Abstract

The texts that adolescents encounter today are often multimodal, meaning they incorporate a variety of modes, including visual images, hypertext, and graphic design elements along with written text. Expanding the perspectives readers use to make sense of the multimodal texts is an important aspect of comprehension instruction. Moving beyond the traditional cognitive strategies often incorporated in instruction frameworks for comprehending written texts, this article presents three additional perspectives for comprehending visual images. Examples from each perspective are included to help middle and high school teachers expand the strategies students draw from to interpret and understand visual images and multimodal texts.