Since the materials used in this book—the English learning advertisements—are print documents，the major semiotic modes involved include written language，pictures，diagrams，graphs，tables，and typographical features.In analysis of multimodal discourses，language is often referred to as verbal mode，the others as visual mode.The distinction between visual mode and verbal mode，actually，is not precise，because everything printed on the pages，including the written linguistic text，can be regarded as belonging to the visual mode.Therefore，in order to avoid confusion，it is necessary to make clear the use of the notions of the verbal mode and visual mode in this book.

The verbal mode refers to the linguistic means of expression which reflect a symbolic way of signification.In the English learning advertisements under discussion，it refers specifically to the written linguistic units，including verbal texts of varied length.Examples of the short ones are slogans on the cover page of the English learning leaflets，headlines of various discourse sections.Examples of the long ones are the verbal paragraphs in the various discourse sections，such as the Corporate Profile and Statements of Competitiveness.The visual mode refers to the semiotic elements whose meaning rely more on the iconic and indexical signification.It includes pictures，graphs，charts，tables and typography in the English learning advertisements in the current book.

The definition of visual mode has also to be specially noted here since many different kinds of resources are often discussed under this notion and the opinions are also highly diverse.According to Kress and van Leeuwen，a mode concerns any“material resource which is used in recognizably stable ways as a means of articulating discourse”（Kress and van Leeuwen，2001：25）.The general modes such as writing-as-mode and image-asmode are beyond dispute，however，the specific modes，for example，color in images，are treated very differently in different studies in the field of multimodal discourse analysis.On the one hand，some researchers on multimodality believe that semiotic resources like color（see for example Kress and van Leeuwen，2002）should be seen as semiotic modes;on the other hand，the majority of analysis based on practical multimodal genres only consider the general semiotic modes and seldom consider those specific semiotic modes.The view in this book，as well as in some other genre-based multimodal analyses（see for example de Groot，2008），is that whether something is a mode depends on the text type in which it is used.Following Stöckl（2004）who believes that“the existing modes represent a hierarchically structured and networked system，in which any one mode can be seen to fall into sub-modes which in their turn consist of distinct features that make up the sub-mode”（Stöckl，2004：12），the current book holds that written language and image are two major modes whereas color should be regarded as a sub-mode attached to the images in the English learning advertisements and will not be analyzed independently.

The distinction between verbal mode and visual mode in this book can find support in other genre-based studies from a multimodal perspective.For example，de Groot（2008）who studied the European business annual reports investigated the features in written texts and visual illustrations which include graphs，diagrams，tables and photographs.

Therefore，the focus of this book is on the ways in which the verbal elements and the visual elements combine，cooperate and interact to form a coherent representation in the multimodal English learning advertisements.