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Author: Austin Dewart

Project for Understanding Multimodality

Project for Understanding Multimodality

So, while there were a lot of different avenues and approaches I could have taken with my multimodality project, I wanted what I chose to be most aligned with some sort of practical application to my internship. Being that multimodality, at least to me, is a complex enough topic that there are a number of different opinions and perspectives on its use and function within academia, I decided to try to be more effective and decisive, both in defining the importance and beneficial use of multimodality in tutoring ESL students, and in how tutors can take advantage of multimodal resources in aide of helping students, whether ESL or not. That is why, simply, what I have been cataloging from my time interning at the ESL Center in in my internship has been a number of different perspectives and ideas for the use of multimodality, and of multimodal resources that can be effective in tutoring. In accordance, my project will also reflect the same through a sort of handbook for what from a tutor’s perspective would be everything multimodality, and what of its place in academia that is most imperative toward that of tutoring. There is still a lot of I’m working through, from websites, correlating different schemas for learning with multimodality, and the different approaches that multimodal resources could be applied and tailored to a number of different individuals and situations in tutoring, but I am making progress, and so far, that has been the sphere of my research and progress for the duration of my project. And up to now with this blog post, I would say that so far, everything has been coming along to the way and need that I have felt  has been necessary for the vision I have of building and composing a useful and worthwhile handbook for tutors and using multimodality.

Multimodality V2: Similar Modems and Differing Schemas of Communication

Multimodality V2: Similar Modems and Differing Schemas of Communication

In my time tutoring at the ESL Center, I’ve had the privilege to work with a small number of international students from Japan and China, from whom I have learned a great deal from the likes Miso as a food, to local protectionism in China. And holy crap, it has been amazing. Tutoring is not foreign to me in any regard with my prior two years of experience working with ESL students while in junior college, but in this semester here at CSU, Chico, I’ve had to overcome and match the challenge of many issues that have followed in working with these students from abroad, more than I ever even encountered tutoring at Yuba College. Surmising those challenges has been met with a great deal of multimodality, both in learning schemas, and indifferent approaches of communicating to bring a nature and precision of language from tutor to student, and vice versa. And at times, there as been the added facet of trying to understand what it is a student specifically needs help with in their assignment (Spag, Syntax, ext), as contextually, the parts of speech or prospective wording that the international students I’ve worked with have tried to transcribe to English from their native language may fail to carry the same meaning or necessary, comprehendible effect.

Whether it is from image based browser searches, to Google translate, even using Microsoft Word’s auto correct option to look at the number of possible different spellings of a word, unto writing and scribbling what we re-iterate with one another in verbal exchange to ensure we understand each other at times; all of this is multimodal means of communication, and the enumerative cogs and gears of my thought are tethered within the fascination of thinking of how all those integral acts of interpretation compound upon one another.

Digitally, I don’t honestly know how much more multimodal we could be without the vast digi-sphere of the internet and the cloud within the provided access of our tablets and smartphones, capable of processing and curating information in so many different stratas and lexicons of synthesized assimilation. What I do know, is that I would like to continue involving multimodality with the comparable that multimodal schemas and means of communication provide when working with international or ESL students, both interpersonally, and with other technical modems of use, in capacity for optimal use and advancement. It’s all one big puzzle with all these separate, yet integral, interval-ed pieces, and it’s freaking amazing. Like, I can’t put into text all of what I’m thinking about regarding multimodality in its plied potential to academia, or in the state for which we’ve already begun to use technology in a multimodal grasp, or the way that multimodality is the same as thinking of pragmatic markers within texting as a linguistic lexicon compared for its worth to more traditional, formal means of conversing in emails, letters, or essays, but it’s all there, and all of that thought is centered around multimodality.

Multimodality has even made me think of myself in my own major and path in college, too. Like in all earnest thought, I feel as competent and confident in our K-12 academia system as a Dust Bowl farmer could have been during the Great Depression. That also goes as far as if I could ever image my prospective self one day striving, or having the desire to pursue some sort of professorship or tenured teaching within the ivory tower of university, either, it would have to be with some sort of serious motivation. So no offense, to my aunt who is an elementary teacher, or anyone other the other educators and professors in my family (sorry, Grandpa Tom and Uncle Nate), but while English Education is technically my major, there was a prominent and very specific reason why I decided I would begin to apply and pursue an MBA degree in graduate school, and not a teaching credential. However, in its composition, hadn’t been for me already accepting an admission offer to an MBA program, multimodality and its application to my experience tutoring here at CSU, Chico is almost enough for me to consider why maybe I would’ve wanted to teach, or for the merit that I had saw as being so much of worth to pursue teaching English, at any specific level of education.

The real focus I want to develop further however, and pinpoint accurately, is the differing means in which multimodality is changing in its access and advance with technology, and in the way we are using both technology and traditional versus more contemporary means of multimodality to reach and work with students interpersonally within a setting such as a tutor here at CSU, Chico, or in a classroom communally, wherever such an emphasis could be applicable.

I’m also thinking multimodality may have been the greatest thing to come of the human race since the asteroid 65 million years ago that came and wiped out all of the dinosaurs.

Defining this Thing Known as Multimodality

Defining this Thing Known as Multimodality

Being human in our organic selves means that we’re capable of something profound within our brains, which have more connections between their neurons and synapses than any computer, by the way. From the times of thousands of centuries before (25-40k years ago) when cavemen were scrawling their primitive doodling’s by firelight, unto some of the more advanced civilizations that followed as predecessor, such as the Mayans, whom looked to the stars for the astral signs of their gods and sacrificed others for their still-beating hearts, to even the Greeks with the Olympians and a whole canon of mythology paralleling a means to make sense of their Earth, and then the Romans whom made those same mythological stories their own and changed the Olympians in their names to that of the planets visible underneath their worldly view, these peoples and their human-selves were all connected with one attribution. Those connections in their brains, and their multimodality.

Being multimodal is nothing knew to mankind, nor ourselves. Our brains are wired in a means of learning that follows in recognizing patterns, and then being able to associate that recognition in comparison and contrast of other patterns. Much like we can read a book on kindle or in paperback, said cavemen drew what they saw of their world within the jagged and uneven canvas of their caves, or in the Mayans who may have seen a comet from the night sky as a sign of an impending apocalypse that led to their so famed human sacrifices to appease their gods. It’s all multimodal, seeing one object or situation in one particular view, and then changing said object or situation unto another platform or modem for whatever varying intent or purpose, from preservation, inquiry and explanation, accessibility and so forth. Like Chico State’s website in its array of color blocking, pictures and order of links and pages- there is a purpose and intent behind that design, and it’s multimodal, too. Many, many other things are as well.

So to me, multimodality is simply fluidity, and its state and form of presentation capable of being changed and displayed as another. Loosely, most things, from ourselves in our image, the dynamics of our social and cultural paradigms are the same. They are almost never stagnant, but changing and shifting, the same as technology and the advances that seem almost as hereditary to follow. Spark to flint. Flicker to flame. Fire to combustion. In case of Engl 431, to me multimodality is again, the change and sway of many different modems and forms of teaching, learning and production within academia. They’re all similar in a multitude of ways, in intent, purpose, or means, just… different, too. This academic modalities could be from in person lectures, to that of distance classrooms over a laptop with a link and feed to the professor and campus itself. Multimodality could be completing an essay via Google Docs, rather than in paper as a part of a midterm exam. Linguistically, multimodality could be from interpersonal speech with another student,  or by email or text; all of which have different means of formality and function, but are still widely the same. It’s the transverse and converse all of those different forms, and being to navigate, change, and exist within those dichotomies that is to me, multimodality.

Lastly, in thinking of things being multimodal, this sort of chart is what I made Monday on the subject, if you can bear my atrocious penmanship.

 

Papers…. What to Write?

Papers…. What to Write?

So there is a lot to take into account with possible tangents of thought that can be made into a thesis, and then developed into a paper for the assignment. Regarding writing and the theory of writing so far from what we’ve read, both from academic sources and discussed in class, is as broad as it can be specific and unique, depending on the respective setting, individual, or regard to a specific style or modem of writing. What serves as most relevant to my own self from what we’ve learned unto now at the moment comes from early within the course when we tracked and reviewed our own literacy/ writing practices. I think looking to a specific sphere of degree of just how much technology plays into influence of the respective practices of a student within the classroom, or how the incorporation and use of technology within personal pursuit of academia gives a specific individual access to the resources and means to be more competent of a student than previous generations had lacked of such access may be a worthwhile comparison in terms of the resources for what many of us take for granted as having at our disposal now.

However, within theory of writing and my internship in the ESL center, I also think it would be beneficial to parallel the effect of culture in defining social groups and social practices of students in how they orate and pen their prose, and within the specific varying practices that can follow such. There are some noticeable differences I can think of between how many students within the United States see writing and follow with in use than some of the international and exchange students I’ve met from abroad. Maybe even looking into school culture more specifically in how it is that students engage and learn within a classroom, and twined with literacies studies in composition practices would be another worthwhile route for an essay. Perhaps even comparing and contrasting the given student experiences from Nelson’s “School Culture” with many of the other aforementioned possible prompts in defining student process in academia, and the correlating patterns of habit that follow within both that of curriculum and given specific commonalities of literacy practices to complete such in their defined means could be a possible avenue to build upon.

The Five Paragraph Essay and Critical, Formative Thought

The Five Paragraph Essay and Critical, Formative Thought

In K-12, I never had much experience with the typical five paragraph essay, nor did I think much of its importance until one renegade of a sort of English teach, whom seemed to teach and rotate on her own independent academic axis, used as such in her classroom in the form of monthly essaic competitions. Winner received a 10% bump to their grade and their name tacked to her classroom’s proverbial ‘wall of fame.’ As a student at that given period, I felt establish and competent with my prose; I felt like I knew how to write, and what I wrote was both of feasibility and prowess. Needless to say, with a competitive streak garnered from sports and a wide range of topics to write from, in four of our six monthly competitions, I won. I even had the daring for my final project to take on a ten page essay later on defining ‘art.’ However, outside of what I already knew of critically formed writing, there wasn’t much left for me to learn from the five paragraph essay. But likewise with academia in writing, the five paragraph essay as a convention has a purpose and a place in its use and meaning in instruction. I would even be daring enough to same that a similar ideology of both habit and thought can be paralleled analogously with the likes of authors and creative writing.

How so? Both in separate imperatives from each other relate to certain forms specific to their genres or sub-genres of writing. The five paragraph essay in its place is meant to help foster the initial contemplations/ pospulative thought of authentic, critically inquiry and response to given subjects, ideals, beliefs and scenarios. Why should there be a death penalty? What is the merit of natural law ethics? is a democratic oligarchy any better  or worse than a communist-based oligarchy? Can a person be intrinsically good, or fall to the compromise of just having good intentions instead? Rather than rely on quotes from a textbook, the foreign summaries and opinions separate of the student, part of the challenge in imperative of the five paragraph essay to some depth of level is to help foster a genuine, authentic, original response to such critical questions and to thus, develop a skilled, independent level of articulate thought so that students may refine and harbor in their own attribution of personal beliefs and values that the alternate set of values separate from the likes of religion among other that traditional academia is meant to provide. In a world of social media, where connection is 130 characters or less, and hashtags and emojis are the primary symbolic image-based means of communication that a great deal of millennials value as their most commonly practices and possibly only schema of written connection, I think that is something important to keep in mind.

Creative writing is similar as well in the sense of form that a writer follows. There are rules, how dialogue is spaced from conventional paragraphs of prose, the rise and fall of the exigency of the story arch, the protagonist or protagonists and the development their narratives undertake. While having a greater deal of autonomy in thought and process, there is still a great deal of concision and challenge to writing fiction. Learning to write in whatever given form that maybe specific to major or career profession is just as valuable in experience to match diversity and learn of possible techniques/ commalities of quality that carry from one form of writing to another. The real parallel to me, however, is in that same critical thought to form a character in the genesis of their story much like the retort or response to a critically provoking question that force a writer in turn of query to be engaged in an active, unique acts of both question and genuine reaction native to their own ideals/ thoughts to that specific situation.

While I don’t mean to defend or condemn any means of writing/ communication, I do believe the original purpose of what the five paragraph essay still remains to have value, and within that said value, there should be a certain premise of respect given to the nature of its place as well.