Hello,

 

I have decided to create a “Vlog” and discuss a few details on my project. I hope everyone has enjoys the awkward video!

 

Unfortunately I cannot sleep and decided to write my assignment now instead of later in the morning. I honestly faced difficulties for this assignment, especially due to heavy workload that is often placed on students near the end of the semester. I am seriously annoyed and cannot deal with overload of work that is given to students; do instructors forget their academic experience in college and the stress students endure? Anyways, when I rhetorically think about Barron’s Pencils to Pixels, I start to reminisce on how new literacy technology is often not afforded to students when first created. An excerpt in the academic article that seemed relevant and powerful, is when he mentions, “Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communications function and is available only to a small number of initiates … As costs decrease and the technology becomes better able to mimic more ordinary or familiar communications, a new literacy spreads across a population.” I often think that students are stifled or removed from accessing important technologies, especially in current academic institutions. Before transferring to Chico State, I reflect on how composition/academic essays were produced and the very ineffective methods that did not work or help my understanding on how to compose an essay. Rhetorically, I think about the rhetorical situation and how the assignments reflect an overview of how essays were composed before computers/digital media were created, and irrelevant to expanding new literacy practices.

I correlate this article to Shipka and how she mentions the importance of expanding multimodal assignments. The examples she used are relevant and demonstrate that composition can be produced in many formats. Also, I am very excited how rhetoric continues to play a major role in composition and how students approach composition. Ultimately, I believe that like new literacy practices/new methods of composition, students should not be forced to produce work that is reflective of previous methods of writing. Students should be able to compose various assignments with new digital media literacies, different writing formats, which potentially correlate with writing in the real world. I know that I am constantly struggling with my English Degree and how we are forced to emulate written academic articles, hindering students from expanding literacy practices within our own major and not emphasizing the importance of digital literacy. However, with this course, I aim to help students understand that composition is not only based on written text and there are various methods on how to compose an assignment.

 

Wow. Multimodality is so important for future instruction and providing an important illustration on how that method of instruction assists students with their work. Specifically, providing different aims by incorporating visual, sonic, and aesthetics helps students to have multiple examples on how to compose, perform, and learn a task or assignment.

I am currently taking Biology 323 (Biology of Sex) and the course provides a different objective compared to typical biological courses: incorporating Multimodality. In the beginning of the semester, students were drilled with various examples on how to learn the process of meiosis. Students were instructed by the professor’s sonic instruction (Audio), PowerPoint slides (Visual), and demonstrating videos to provide a clearer method to understand the material. However, the professor stepped up her game and incorporated something new, a new method I have never experienced in college: Kinesthetic, and working physically with various colors of clay.

This video here illustrates the various colors we used to re-create the process of meiosis. This video is in Claymation, however, every single student enacted the same process in the classroom. Learning this extensive process assisted me tremendously as a students and I asked the professor where did she learned this method of instruction. Her response, “I used to teach elementary school and realized the effectiveness by including physical touch with course work.”

Overall, this example of multimodality helped me to really think how I want to create a lesson plan for the final project. I have Ideas to include various colors of clay and composing words with the clay. Sorry that I am missing class today and will be there on Wednesday.

 

Best,

Ruben Mendoza

 

Holy crap! I am ambivalent on whether I want to write an academic research paper, proposal, or literary journal. Currently, my mind is set to write the academic proposal to potentially use for a graduate writing sample.

 

Potential Proposal(I will expand):

Remedial English courses place students towards unrealistic expectations and beliefs to obtain the basic skills needed to succeed in their academic career. Through further investigation, the proposed study is to remove remedial English courses, create various syllabi for college English professors to utilize, and incorporate several writing methods that will translate to all academic majors.

 

The proposal will consist of interviewing students, professors and comparing educational statics (If I can find any). I will incorporate statistics from a news article that questions remedial English courses and illustrate the potential advantages for removing those courses. Academic Journals that we have read in class will be used and I will synthesize their arguments on basic writing courses to illustrate the negative effects on students. I really want to incorporate actual syllabi in the proposal and hopefully be influential.

 

I am conducting a small study by creating a study. I will use Kim’s English 130 class as the population and the sample will be the students I mentor: ten students. I have asked them several questions and will obtain the results once they all complete their survey.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

 

 

 

 

Wiley’s article demonstrates the irrelevancy of the five-paragraph essay and students are too comfortable and hesitant to change the formulaic writing that was taught to them in secondary education. Students often assume that all writing stems from this format, and continuously use the format throughout their academic careers. Last night, I assisted my sister with her writing assignment. She is taking a remedial English course at Butte College and had difficulty beginning her essay. I noticed on the instructor’s assignment sheet, they used terms such as Basic Writing and incorporated examples that presented work that reflected similar structures to the five-paragraph essay. I became concerned with the content and showed my sister a different method on how to create small excerpts.

 

Here is the story:

 

Friday night, I arrived home late from work and my sister waited in the kitchen for my arrival. She needed assistance on her homework assignment and could not write her essay. I told her I would ignore my assignments to help her, due to her emotional state. She was anxious, nervous and overall felt insecure about writing.

As we began to look over her syllabus and the essay question, I noticed the instructor mentioned that this essay would help students understand the basics of writing. That this essay will help introduce students to the basic skill of synthesizing various resources into an essay to make their argument compelling.

I asked my sister what she thought the instructor would require for her to make a great essay. She then stated, “I think she wants an five page essay, right?” I looked at my sister and told her no.

I told her (in a simple way) that formulaic writing will not assist her to create an amazing essay and that she needed to forget about the dumb five-paragraph essay. I insisted that the five-page essay is not the only method of writing. We went over various sources from the book and selected excerpts that related to the question. I had her create Memo’s like the students that I worked with in my internship and placed important quotes in the memo. We created a total of four memos and she seemed really proud that she was able to accomplish the task within three hours.

We continued to work together till four in the morning. She became frustrated, angry, and wanted to quit several times. However, after completing the assignment (the rough draft), she looked at me and said, “I cannot believe I did that,” and “I never have written anything like this before.”

I told her that her grammar was not the best or that the essay was not a finished product, however, she incorporated the most crucial part of the essay: content. She seemed to gain confidence and realized that she had the capability to learn new methods of communication by being open and willing,

 

End of story.

 

I realized that instructors in secondary education or even higher education believe that students are not capable of challenging work. That student’s should only indulge themselves in the five-paragraph essay, because of their “inability” to not comprehend writing in different forms. However, interacting with my sister and assisting her throughout her assignment proved with proper motivation and sponsorship, a student can accomplish anything.