A few years ago if I had read Takayoshi’s and Selfe’s chapter “Thinking about Multimodality,” I would have thought to myself, “It’s a noble concept, including multiple mediums in a composition course, but it’s not for me.” I was so overwhelmed by videos, hyper-linking, and even internet classes that I would have shied away from teaching composition in a “non-traditional” format. According to Takayoshi and Selfe, the act of reformatting composition to include cultural practices and modern technology is not new (7). There will be those who are always intimidated and put-off by change, but, for educators, we owe it to our students to teach curriculums which are relevant to their lives. Rather than being distracting to the conventional “alphabetic” assignments, multimodality enriches the students’ overall understanding and application of analytical skills (5). A student-centered pedagogy, which I strongly value, demands that we frame assignments within students’ “own cultures and discourses” (5). When students can utilize what they enjoy doing outside of class with their course work along with preparing them for a technological-dependent society, they are more likely to be engaged and successful. Does this mean that instructors will need to put in extra time training themselves and developing new assignments and how to evaluate them? Well, of course, however, if the results are that students see composition as relevant rather than archaic, then the extra time is well spent.
No longer threatened by ever-changing technology, I began thinking of how our composition courses could adapt some of our existing assignments to make them even more multimodular. For instance, I thought about how the review essay could be expanded to include the actual song, movie, restaurant, etc. that is being reviewed. The song could be playing for the audience to hear while they are reading, or a video file of a commercial or trailer could be inserted within the text. Also, the research discourse community assignment lends itself to this type of expansion. Students could video their interviews and segments of their field research and link them right into their papers. I can see how this interaction with words and visual elements would only increase the students’ excitement about the projects.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Writing Performance in the Classroom
Before I even comment on this week’s article “Performing Writing, Performing Literacy,” I want to address how teaching 102 has affected the way I now read articles. I caught myself deliberately looking for the authors’ rhetorical moves, and when I detected them, I made notes, not just for the sake of annotating this article but to think about how I would mimic the moves in my own writing. The article opens with a breakdown of composition research then explains the methodology of the said study before launching into the pedagogical implications of incorporating writing performance in the classroom. At this moment in my writing timeline, I am particularly interested in the moves articles make because I am drafting my thesis prospectus. Consciously, I have never paid as close attention to the steps an article takes in relaying information to the reader. Usually I am too wrapped up in analyzing the content, rather than both the content and the form.
One of the first research question asked by the authors of this piece is “Can we expand our curricula and our pedagogies to make room for performance in the writing classroom?” (226) Throughout the article they answer this question by suggesting that performance “stands to reinvigorate both teaching and learning in the writing classroom” (227). Realizing that performance cannot be separated from audience, the writer is forced to think about the complexity and individuality of every piece. Knowing that a piece will be performed effects every step of the writing process and often serves as motivation for the writer to think about not just the clarity and organization of the material but the entertainment value for the proposed audience. Take for example, 102’s performance component. In groups, our students will present their research project on a particular academic discourse community. The more successful performances will be those that are organized around specific research questions, such as the study illustrated in this article.
But as the article claims, the performance element of writing does not only come at the end of the process; it can come at the beginning or even the middle. One of the student writer contributors, Beth McGregor, describes her performance as a writer. She takes on a character while she is writing, who assists her in silencing her inner critic in order to conquer writer’s block. This section reminds me of Ballinger’s advice in The Curious Writer to give the writer “permission to write badly.” In McGregor’s case, acting like a writer, or taking on the character of a writer, helps her to write. She describes this liberating experience, “Success! My paper got written, largely because of the help of an adopted character, who was just an elevated form of myself, but a character, nonetheless […]” (236). The performance aspect of writing is not reserved for the end but any part of the process. Writing performance as a tool should be implemented in our composition courses because it is empowering and relevant for our students.
One of the first research question asked by the authors of this piece is “Can we expand our curricula and our pedagogies to make room for performance in the writing classroom?” (226) Throughout the article they answer this question by suggesting that performance “stands to reinvigorate both teaching and learning in the writing classroom” (227). Realizing that performance cannot be separated from audience, the writer is forced to think about the complexity and individuality of every piece. Knowing that a piece will be performed effects every step of the writing process and often serves as motivation for the writer to think about not just the clarity and organization of the material but the entertainment value for the proposed audience. Take for example, 102’s performance component. In groups, our students will present their research project on a particular academic discourse community. The more successful performances will be those that are organized around specific research questions, such as the study illustrated in this article.
But as the article claims, the performance element of writing does not only come at the end of the process; it can come at the beginning or even the middle. One of the student writer contributors, Beth McGregor, describes her performance as a writer. She takes on a character while she is writing, who assists her in silencing her inner critic in order to conquer writer’s block. This section reminds me of Ballinger’s advice in The Curious Writer to give the writer “permission to write badly.” In McGregor’s case, acting like a writer, or taking on the character of a writer, helps her to write. She describes this liberating experience, “Success! My paper got written, largely because of the help of an adopted character, who was just an elevated form of myself, but a character, nonetheless […]” (236). The performance aspect of writing is not reserved for the end but any part of the process. Writing performance as a tool should be implemented in our composition courses because it is empowering and relevant for our students.
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