Multimodal Assignment Ideas

The readings in this course have discussed some diverse themes, but there tends to be overlap in most of the articles. The main thing that each article seems to touch on to some extent is how writing can’t be taught as a one size fits all skill. We as teachers need to rethink how we teach writing in order to better prepare students to use writing in the real world. This will produce more qualified young adults, and they will not be as resistant to learning writing skills if they see that it has value to them in their future careers.

So, on to the idea for my project. I thought about making a propaganda poster that shows how current writing instruction is very formulaic and therefore ineffective, as it does not prepare students to accomplish the wide variety of writing objective that they will be asked to complete when they leave school. The most logical vehicle for my statement would be the Schaffer method because it actually proposes a formula to teach students how to write. However, it also applies to current methods of writing instruction as a whole. People need more practical and specialized education to truly become successful and proficient writers in their field.

Another idea I had was to do a presentation that demonstrated that not all kinds of writing and writing practices (particularly the five paragraph essay) work for all kinds of writing objectives. I was going to do so by asking people to try to cut paper or screw in screws with scissors, hammers, knives, etc. Each writing strategy would be represented by a different tool, and each task would represent a different writing objective. To demonstrate that five paragraph essays have no value in or out of school, I was going to use a bag of cat shit to represent the five paragraph essay. Obviously, you wouldn’t cut paper or screw in screws or do anything productive with cat shit, so why would you use the five paragraph essay for accomplishing any real-world writing objective? It belongs in the trash or lit on fire on your neighbor’s porch, just like the five paragraph essay.