Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p> Language teaching materials, and especially those devoted to the acquisition of languages for specific purposes, have undergone dramatic changes in the last few years. It is most uncommon nowadays to find subjects that revolve around a single textbook or handbook, or that are complemented with materials in fixed supports such as DVDs. The Internet has revolutionized access to materials of several kinds, which, up to a certain point, can be considered authentic rather than <jats:italic>ad hoc</jats:italic> creations. Even publishing houses have adapted to the new trends and provide websites to complement their language teaching materials addressed to primary and secondary education. Most Internet materials, especially the most common ones in higher education classrooms, websites, and videos, share a common characteristic: they are multimodal. This means they consist of a combination of modes: in the case of websites, text, information layout, color, fonts, embedded static and dynamic images, and sound; and in the case of videos, embodied modes (paralanguage, gestures, posture, facial expression, gaze), disembodied modes (background, or use of artifacts and visuals), and filmic modes (shots, cuts, subtitles, embedded text, music and sounds, among others). This entry will offer an overview of the importance of multimodality and multimodal literacy in the use and creation of new digital materials for the teaching of languages for specific purposes. </jats:p>