Blog 6: Multimodality: Is there a place for it in English Composition?

Blog # 6

Multimodality: Is there a place for it in English Composition?

Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia L. Selfe allude to the disruption that multimodality presents for the traditional English composition classes. They also hint that the way information is being distributed is constantly changing, which implies that students are learning differently. Students are learning more through multimedia, which involves more visuals and fewer texts.  Takayoshi and Selfe argue that composition teachers have yet to embrace this shift even though it’s evident that their students are already utilizing these modes. Takayoshi and Selfe give a compelling reason as to why educators and scholars should be interested in taking advantage of multimodality: simply because there are cultural shifts in meanings of writing, composing and texts. 

“In a world where communication between individuals and groups is both increasingly cross-cultural and digital, teachers of composition are beginning to sense the inadequacy of texts—and composition instruction—that employs only one primary semiotic channel (the alphabet) to convey meaning. In the internationally networked digital environments, texts must take advantage of multiple semiotic channels. At the same time, however many composition teachers—raised and educate in the age and the landscapes of print—feel hesitant about the task of designing, implementing and evaluating assignments that call for multimodal literacy practices and students who compose texts from video, sounds still images and animations, as well as from words. It’s difficult situation, and composition instruction is poised on the precipice of the change (2-3).

The scenario that Takayoshi and Selfe present sounds like the impending death knell to traditional composition writing, though this is not the case. It’s more or less a realization that the way people are currently making meaning around them is changing and that academic institutions are changing as quickly with the times. The academic world seems to be disconnected with what is happening in the outside world with regard to the modes of communication when in fact, students and professors alike should be taking advantage of multimedia.

Takayoshi and Selfe summarize their arguments for the importance of multimodal compositions in five tenets. The first point being that students need to be versatile in multiple modalities. The second point being that for composition writing to be relevant it needs to reflect computer literacy. The third point being that multimodal composition is engaging even though it may be complicated and time consuming.  The fourth point being that students have to be aware of the rhetorical, that is, how meaning is made, perceived, and delivered. Their fifth and final point is that there is a value in the pedagogical practice when teaching composition through multimedia. These are the very tenets that more or less emerge in Shipka’s multimodal task-based framework for composing.

Shipka perceives writing as a way of people communicating their thoughts. She believes that composition writing can be conveyed in various ways using multimodality to create meaning.  While Shipka does not ignore the value of composition writing, she emphasizes that educators should embrace the various multimedia in society in the classroom.  She asserts that educators need to examine the functionality of multimodality processes, as well as its values, structures and semiotic practices in helping students communicate their thoughts. 

Shipka, in “A Multimodal Task-based Framework for Composing”, makes an argument for composition courses in that they can create opportunities for students to begin structuring the occasions for reception and delivery of the work they compose using a mixture of textual, audio, and visual modes in combination with mediums and materiality to create meaning (278-279). Shipka shares several presentations of her students, which utilize textual, audio, and visual modes to compose their essays. The students record their voices to explain the purpose of their presentations or essays and the reasons for their choices behind the mode(s) of communication they utilize.

It’s interesting how reflective Shipka is of her own practices.  “The past seven years have afforded me opportunities to begin exploring the wider field of possibilities in the courses I teach.”(279).   She realizes that students were purposeful in their structure, delivery, and reception of their work. In addition, her students’ presentations made allowances for “thinking, acting, and working within and beyond the space of their first-year composition classroom.”(279). Shipka alludes that regular composition classes limit students’ creativity because they are restricted to the parameters of conventional writing structures.  However, with multimodal compositions, “Students have a much richer imagination for what might be accomplished in the course than our journals have yet even begun to imagine, let alone address.”(282).

              The point to take away from this is that when students are put inside a box there is less inquiry and creativity.  On the flip side, with careful and thoughtful instructions students can surpass even what’s expected within a composition classroom that makes allowances for “goal-directed multimodal task-based framework for composing” (285). Shipka uses the phrase “goal-oriented activity” which is integral to understand the success she has in her composition classroom.  Her students are involved in personal and meaningful activities where their scope and purpose are decided by their professor.

It seems that Shipka is creating a new composition curriculum that is based on her goal-directed multimodal task-based framework. Multimodal task-based framework has clear objectives, outlines, and/or structure similar to that used in typical composition writing, for example, having a clear thesis and providing supporting details. According to Shipka, “Asking students to produce an account of their goals and choices reminds them of the importance of assessing rhetorical contexts, setting goals, and making purposeful choices.”(288). Thus this framework really pushes her students to think of their audience, the modes that they are using, and delivery. Students have to understand how audience, mode, and delivery work together to effect meaning. Hence, this framework is extremely complex for students and probably more so than traditional composition writing. The crux of the multimodal framework is that it makes allowances for students as “critically minded producers of knowledge” (292). Critical to the multimodal framework is that it accounts for production, delivery and reception, which she explains in the Mirror IQ test that one of her student creates. The Mirror IQ test only requires a mirror; therefore, no technology is necessary to decipher the task.  In other words, technology isn’t always necessary in the multimodal framework.  The multimodal framework theory is similar to Anne Wysocki’s philosophy behind the new media in that technology is not always necessary for students to undertake a complex compositional task (300).

Shipka concludes with four main tenets that are featured in activity-based multimodal curriculum. First, it sets goals and engages students in the course. Secondly, it draws upon a wider range of community resources other than what courses typically allow. Thirdly, it speaks to ways the various choices they have made serve, alter, or complicate student goals. Fourthly, it attends to the various ways in which texts may vary from one mode to the next, as well as how it takes into consideration how meaning is made and audience perception.