Baliso, Vuyiseka Promrose2025-12-122025-12-122024https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21583Visual literacy reflects the evolving nature of literacy in the 21st century, underscoring the need for multiliteracies in education. In the South African context, visual literacy is embedded in the English First Additional Language (EFAL) curriculum, particularly through the analysis of multimodal texts such as advertisements. When effectively taught, advertisements can serve as powerful tools to help learners interpret, critique, and communicate meaning in a rapidly changing, digital, and democratic society. However, the interdisciplinary nature of advertisements, which draws on fields such as art, media, marketing, and anthropology, makes them particularly challenging to teach. Despite this complexity, there is a limited amount of empirical research that explores how teachers experience and approach the teaching of advertisements in EFAL classrooms. Guided by Social Constructivism and Critical Visual Literacy (CVL), this study investigates the experiences and strategies of Grade 12 EFAL teachers in township schools as they teach advertisements to develop learners’ visual literacy skills. Employing a qualitative research design, the study collected data through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and documentation (Learning and Teaching Support Materials – LTSMs) with six Further Education and Training (FET) phase teachers (Grades 10–12) from three township schools in the Western Cape. The data were analysed using thematic analysis (TA) and document analysis (DA) to identify patterns in pedagogical practices and curriculum implementation The findings offer valuable insights into the realities of visual literacy instruction in under-resourced contexts and underscore the need for targeted professional development for both pre-service and in-service EFAL teachers. Notable challenges included limited conceptual clarity around advertising techniques, inconsistent integration of visual-textual analysis, and restricted learner engagement due to teacher-centred practices. However, the study also identified promising practices such as the use of familiar advertisements and visual modelling, which enhanced participation and critical interpretation. This research contributes to the growing discourse on multimodality and critical literacy in South African classrooms by advocating for context-responsive training and curriculum support to strengthen visual literacy pedagogy.enAdvertisementsCritical Visual LiteracyEnglish Language TeachingMeaning-MakingMultimodalityThesis