Sunday, September 10, 2017


Multimodality Past and Future



      As an scholar in the academic profession, I have always struggled with the issues of multimodality, as a medium to make an academic argument because I was taught in a  traditional setting, where the five paragraph essay was the only medium available to us to make any kind of academic argument. My thoughts about multimodality have always been associated with creative writing, or performing in a creative way, which I though was not professional at all. As I moved into new academic settings, I realized that multimodality is an important part of writing and rhetoric.


 I am amazed at how time has changed this idea about multimodality in my thoughts. Today I see multimodality as a way to perform and achieve success in any academic setting, although it can seem intellectually demanding and time consuming (Takaoshi & Self 4). When I hear the word multimodality, I would assume that there should be a powerpoint involved, or some kind of audio/video. Students today deal with all kinds of texts, whether textual or visual. That is why in Chapter 1 of Multimodal Composition, Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Self, in there first reasoning about the importance of multimodal composition state that "students need to be experiences and skilled not only in reading (consuming texts) employing multiple modalities, but also in composing in multiple modalities" in order to achieve successful communication in the "digital communication network" existent in the diverse professional workplaces and life in general (3). I think that the act of composing is evident in that act of "remediation" explained in Made Not Only in Words. Just as TV is remediated on film, and the web is remediated on print, emphasizing the idea that " the new...repeats what came before, while at the same time remaking that which it models" ( Yancy 314). I think that this idea of remediation is a very good way to introduce multimodal projects in the composition classroom. 


 I am observing a 103 class which basically has a multimodal aspect to it. The 103 course first of all employs a multimodal textbook called Vizi Online Textbook, that the students can access it easily through blackboard. The instructor lists the major sections that the students should look at before class. Although the major directive is to "read" the text, the Vizi textbook is a collection of video and textual interface. Another multimodal aspect in the class that I am observing is the fact that most of the assignments are submitted through blackboard. I can still remember the pile of white paper that my teacher used to collect every class. Having the assignments submitted through blackboard allows the students to think of writing as something that can not only be accomplished on white paper and by using pen, but also by using a screen, that allows some kind of text to be created. The students then are not limited to words when they submit assignments; they can use images, sound and video to argue for their topics and prove their points in composition.


    The general theme for the course is the future of higher education. Students often have writing assignments that speak to this major theme. One of the major assignment is having students look at a multimodal text and evaluating what seems unfamiliar, or strange for them as students in that text. I think this is a great chance for them to think of multimodal texts as texts that can be written about and that they can create texts that are multimodal at the same time. 

   If I were to teach a classroom, I would definitely add a multimodal project as a major assignment. I think that students today deal with multimodality in their daily lives, that they would enjoy doing a multimodal project in the class. I think transforming information from a video to a text is one interesting activity that students can engage in to experience multimodality. I also think that I could add a different dimension to this assignment by asking students to perform transform the information they got from the video into a podcast and therefore reconsider the rhetorical situation of speaker, audience and subject. I personally like what one of my friends did with her students. She had them do a exhibition as a final project of the semester, where they expressed a major argument of stand on a topic. I think having this different space allows them to learn about the way rhetoric works in different settings. 


Works Cited 
Selfe, Cynthia L. Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press,       2007. Print.

Yancy, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” College Composition and Communication, vol.56,no.2,2004,p.297.,doi:10.2307/4140651.

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