This article narrates and interrogates some of the responses of a group of English teachers, and their lecturer, to an assignment in a post-graduate course entitled Language and assessment. The assignment required the teachers to respond to a text in a mode other than writing, and to design the assessment of this representation. Three of their designs, and their lecturer's assessment of these designs, are described and discussed. It is argued that assessment of multimodal representations of learning is complex and multilayered, and made more so by teachers' and lecturers' assessment histories. (Contains 1 footnote and 3 tables.)