This study reports on the responses to a survey of 55 upper primary school teachers, conducted prior to their classes engaging in a substantial unit of work in multimodal composition. The survey was designed to ascertain the extent to which the teachers were already familiar with, and had already embedded in their teaching, a metalanguage of multimodal composition. The project from which the data was drawn and its underlying theoretical perspective are described. While the teachers' overall attention to a relevant metalanguage is identified as quite low, it is the differential attention that is paid to the more general elements of text construction practices, together with the prior professional learning associated with this material, which raises concerns about preparedness for multimodal authoring teaching more generally. Schools, school systems and teachers themselves are advised to take urgent and systemic action to ensure the satisfactory implementation of multimodal authoring as literacy practice. Recommendations for further research are presented.