The image becomes a constituent part of various genres, integrating the vast discursive fields present in the social sphere of human communication and interaction. Thus, this research aims at diagnosing reading approaches present in Portuguese language teaching in the educational context and its implications for the visual literacy. To do so we have investigated the practice of a Portuguese language teacher in a public school, describing and interpreting the teacher-material relationship, and how the material used allow or not the promotion visual literacy. This work, moreover, is a part of a research developed in Nunes (2016), whose methological point of view is a qualitative-interpretative one and diagnostic based; and, a field study. As theoretical foundation, we have based on this study, on what is regard to visual literacy (ELKINS, 2009), in the theoretical and analytical assumptions of the Grammar of Visual Design (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006) and visual Semantics (BAMFORD, 2003); and in what is concerned to reading approaches, in the studies of Cassany (2006), as well as in the studies about critical literacy (BAPTISTA, 2010, 2012, 2014). After the analysis, it is possible to say that the concept of reading established in the classroom is primarily psycholinguistic and linguistic. Moreover, the treatment given to the image is in general of an accessorial nature in the composition of the multimodal text. Therefore, the development of visual literacy, from a sociocultural perspective, is incipient in the teaching of native and foreign languages in the context investigated.52138160