Multimodal Composition Assignment
Feb. 15, 2011
Brief Introduction To the Course
The course I planned is situated in a 151-ish freshman college composition setting. The course environment will be one that incorporates multimedia sources, including pictures, comic strips, video clips, and films, into the teaching and discussion of basic rhetorical concepts such as angels of vision or rhetorical effects (which is close to the idea of how message persuades stated in the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Write). Via a process of close reading of texts, images, and even videos and films, students will be given recursive practice of interpreting messages of the source materials based on a kind of rhetorical awareness. They will also be asked to represent certain rhetorical effects in a series of composing assignment. The multimodal assignment I designed will be planted in the later stage of the course when students would have been seasoned more or less with basic rhetorical concepts and effects.
By the time students would be asked to make that presentation, the class should have gone through the “close-reading” of pictures, comic strips, films and so forth, having reached certain understanding of the function of various details in multimedia sources including the use of prelude in both writing and filming, symbolism, montage, and close-up lens etc.
Several Examples of Sources:
Films: Awaking Life, Waltz with Bashir, Dr. Strangelove
Play: Salome by Oscar Wilde
Video clips: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976, 2009)
Comic Strips: The Walking Dead
Text: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Audley’s Secret
The multimodal assignment will be a follow-up exercise for the studying of Oscar Wilde’s theatrical writing in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Via the assignment, I hope to encourage students to explore his aestheticism as well as expressive writing. It will be carried out in the form of presentation for about 5 to 10 minutes long, and it requires only the basic use of PowerPoint and audio and video recorder. Learning this novel by Wilde will be one of the sequences of the class. Towards the end of the Sequence, students will be asked first to identify with certain scenes in the novel. The moment does not need to be long, and it could be as instantaneous as a glance at “the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of laburnum” as portrayed in the opening of the novel. They will need to explain or analysis the rhetorical as well as the scenic work of the chosen scene early in their presentations, looking at diction, angels of vision, the scenic aura, and the implied messages etc. In the second stage of the presentation, they will need to explain their visualization of the scene, the picture “seen” through their mind via certain lens (such as extreme close-up lens on a still image). Based on the depiction of the scene in their imagination, they will be asked to make a vision remix in which they strive to employ the same type of lens in viewing certain object, and in a way, remake the scene in real life. Presenters should build their own context for the remade scene, and consequently, their vision remix will have to have certain prelude consisted of images and/or voice-over. The entire class will be asked to participate in the peer review of the presentation, in which they will evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the specific lens and the remade scene.
SiYang,
ReplyDelete“Towards the end of the Sequence, students will be asked first to identify with certain scenes in the novel.”
I like the idea of this assignment, but how would students identify with certain scenes in the novel? You provide an explanation later on, but I feel that following the instructions that you have provided would lead them to analyze certain scenes or mentally visualizing them rather than identifying with them. It seems to me that I have a problem with the word “identify” because I feel that identification should come from within (self-motivated). Perhaps defining what you mean by identifying here would help me understand the task better.
I do not understand this course. Why teach the Wilde novel? How does it fit in a FY rhet/comp. course?
ReplyDeleteIf you could give some examples for students to look at that would be helpful. I had a difficult time envisioning exactly what the final projects would look like.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds overwhelming for a 151 course. Perhaps it would be easier in an upper level course.
You might also discuss what kind of instruction students might recieve on using the equipment and editing video and audio. Also, how much time will be spent in class on the project?