This study is concerned with the significance of the affordances of multimodality in contemporary conceptualizations of ESL/literacy pedagogies. Using a cellular phone advertisement, 18 students composed visual representations of their understandings of the text. Drawing on the social semiotic framework of Kress and van Leeuwen, the annotated drawings of the students were analyzed and interpreted for meaning making. The findings showed that multimodal texts afforded the students opportunities for diverse interpretations and representations of visual images based on the interplay of self-identity and social-cultural worlds. (Contains 9 figures.)