Audio and oral meanings share the sense of hearing as the primary medium of perception. Audio meanings range from ambient or background sounds in our environment, to sounds that have symbolic meaning, and to the complex meanings represented in music. Oral meanings carry with them the basic qualities of audio meanings as we modulate volume and pitch in the sounds of speaking. Despite the important connections, there are large and significant differences between the ways in which language is formed in the oral and written modes. These differences are the power that motivates mode-shifting in learning, not just between oral and written meanings, but across the full range of modes of meaning.