As a 3rd-year BSED Filipino student, one curriculum practice that powerfully connects audio and oral meanings to reading and writing is choral reading of tula (poetry) combined with written response activitiesa common yet deeply meaningful practice in Filipino language classrooms.

A teacher begins by playing an audio recording of a Filipino poem perhaps Rolando Tinio's "Ako ang Daigdig" or a traditional kundiman allowing students to experience the text through sound and rhythm before seeing the written words. Students absorb the emotion and musicality of the language purely through listening.

Next, the written text is distributed and students read it chorally aloud together as a class. This transforms silent, individual reading into a collective oral and auditory experience. For Filipino learners navigating between their mother tongue and the national language, hearing the poem spoken aloud before reading independently provides crucial scaffolding.

Finally, students write a personal response, a reflection, a reaction poem, or a short sanaysay it is connecting the poem's themes to their own lives. This shift from listening, to oral reading, to written composition is a clear enactment of synaesthesia: meaning moves fluidly across audio, oral, and written modes, with each transition deepening understanding.

Dimensions of Multimodal Literacies Pedagogy

Situated Practice is present from the start. By grounding the lesson in listening first, the teacher honors Filipino learners' cultural roots in oral performance, awit, and duplo making language feel familiar before it becomes academic.

Overt Instruction occurs when the teacher explicitly draws attention to how meaning shifts across modes how the tunog (sound) of a word in the audio creates a different emotional effect than seeing the same word on the page.

Critical Framing emerges during written response, when students question the poem's perspective: Whose voice is represented? What does this say about Filipino identity and experience? This pushes students from emotional response into analytical thinking.

Transformed Practice is achieved through the written response itself students take meaning constructed through listening and choral reading and redesign it in written form, shaped by their own voice and experience.

Why This Matters

As a future Filipino teacher, this practice reminds you that the Filipino language lives first in the mouth and the ear before it lives on the page. When you bring sound into your writing classroom, you teach students to feel the language before they are asked to think it onto paper and that is where genuine literacy begins.

Connecting Audio and Oral Meanings to Reading and Writing