Cynthia Haller (2010) conducted a study on three student research papers in an upper division research—junior level—writing course. She questioned the manner in which students learn to recognize academic arguments in source materials and how they integrate and use them in their own writing. She asks, “What does it mean to construct an academic argument using disciplinary discourse?” (p. 34). Haller found that “[o]nly students who had had extensive experience with reading and writing within their disciplines and across a range of disciplinary contexts were able to successfully identify, explain, and engage discipline-based criteria for writing” (p. 36). Her focus on an upper-division course is relevant to a study that focuses on FYC because it is in FYC where students begin to learn their way around the academic discourse community to then compose for their specific disciplines. If they continue to present with problems understanding academic arguments beyond FYC, then it is possible that educators are not approaching the subject in a way that encourages students to retain knowledge to carry forward into their disciplinary studies. Haller addresses to some degree the Toulmin method of argumentation when identifying the logos of academic arguments (p. 35). This is perhaps a good place to start addressing the validity of asking FYC students to conduct a rhetorical analysis of visual argument in the form of print ads, televised ads, magazine covers, movie posters, etc. to then compose and produce their own.
Additionally, Anne Wysocki (2004) argues that we already know the value of multimodal composing, but we do not have a good sense of the how and why of it. Wysocki reinforces the importance of understanding the how and why of multimodal composing by focusing on one aspect, the visual argument, in order to gain a better understanding of how students interpret and then compose visual arguments. In recent years, arguments for incorporating new media into writing instruction have been clearly stated (Handa, 2004; Hobbs, 2004; Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Yancey, 2008). There is no question about the need; however, what has not been thoroughly examined is how composing in new media specifically reflects the research process and forming academic arguments. Additionally, what is not clear is how well connected visual arguments are to the academic discourse community. What is also not clear is how, when composing multimedia texts, these projects shape, change, and encourage a sense of agency in students. Wysocki defines new media texts as those texts
that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality: Such composers design texts that help readers/consumers/viewers stay alert to how any text—like its composers and readers—doesn’t function independently of how it is made and in what contexts. Such composers design texts that make as overtly visible as possible the values they embody. (2004, p. 150)
Wysocki has presented arguments that move beyond addressing the need to incorporate multimodal composing into FYC. She presents a social aspect to multimodal composing, which is appealing to consider in the classroom because it suggests that students have a stronger sense of agency and of “the values they embody” in their work. So it is not enough to simply cobble together sources as Haller’s (2010) study addresses and reveals; the goal is to craft an argument beyond the word on the printed page to effect change.
Students entering the academy in the twenty-first century arrive with ample exposure to digital technologies and varying degrees of exposure to multimodal texts. It seems likely that in future years similar students will arrive to college exposed to advanced technologies as early as their preschool years. In fact, many preschoolers today expertly find their way around iPhones and laptops. While I’m not convinced a small child needs access to such advanced technology as iPhones, I am convinced that a result of such access is an increased demand in developing a pedagogy that both welcomes and promotes the use of new media in first-year composition. By the time students begin attending college-level courses, they are often more adept at using technology than many instructors, but students often lack the critical thinking skills to develop well-defined digital arguments. Having early access to digital technologies suggests that “we must simultaneously teach students to make meaning from written or oral human language and from patterns and visuals that will help them thrive and communicate in a highly complex world” (Martinez, 2010, p. 72). Indeed, and when faced with the challenges of twenty-first century technologies,
many faculty teaching in English studies find themselves scrambling to re-think and re-design educational efforts within expanded ethical contexts that recognize vastly different global perspectives, learning how to function with an increasing sense of responsibility in new and taxing economic parameters, acknowledging and then addressing the need to learn a range of rapidly changing technologies that allow for an expanded network of communication and intellectual exchange. (Hawisher & Selfe, 1999, p. 3)
As Wysocki (2004) also suggests, it is precisely these “ethical contexts” that encourage composition instructors to consider the place of new media/multimodal composing in the writing classroom in such a way that instruction results in creating a sense of agency in students that essentially effects social change while assimilating into the academic discourse community. --Beth Bensen-Barber
Professor of English
References
Bartholomae, D. (2002). Inventing the university. In T. R. Johnson & S. Morhahan, Teaching Composition: Background Readings. (pp. 73-02). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Haller, Cynthia R. (2010, Fall/Winter). Toward rhetorical source use: Three student journeys. WPA: Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administration, (34)1, 33-59.
Handa, C. (2004). Introduction. In C. Handa, Visual rhetoric in a digital world: A critical sourcebook. (pp. 1-5). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Hawisher, G. & Selfe, C. L. Selfe. (1999). The passions that mark us: Teaching texts, and technologies. In G. Hawisher and C. L. Selfe, Passions, pedagogies, and twenty-first century technologies. (pp. 1-12). Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.
Hobbs, C. L. (2004). Learning from the past: Verbal and visual literacy in early modern rhetoric and writing pedagogy. In C. Handa, Visual rhetoric in a digital world: A critical sourcebook. (pp. 55-70). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Kress, G, & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Introduction. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. (pp. 1-23). Part of Hatchette, UK: Hodder Education.
Martinez, M. (2010, November). New literacies for a new era. Phi Delta Kappan, (92)3, 72-73.
Takayoshi, Pamela & Selfe, Cynthia L. (2007). Thinking about multimodality. In C. L. Selfe (Ed.), Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers. (pp. 1-12). Creskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.
Wysocki, A. F. (2004). Opening new media to writing: Openings and justifications. In A. F. Wysocki et al. (Eds.), Writing new media theory and applications for expanding the teaching of composition. (pp. 1-41). Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.
Yancey, K. B. (2008, September). Planning for a future very different from our past. Council Chronicle, (18)1, 28-29.
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learned a lot
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