This week I feel that a common thread during the texts that we were assigned was reflecting on uses of genre within everyday communication. Kerry Dirk did an excellent job of pointing out why readers and writers need to start thinking of genres as rhetorical situations that happen more often than we would think. Dirk gave many examples showing how genres are applicable across typical academic conventions. Even the simpler forms of writing can be credited with the expectations of cultural "standards. " My main question for Dirk would be "how can we develop a good sense of when genre standards need to be questioned"? Is it dangerous to take for granted that we depend on rules in order to inform or writing of behavior in communication? I feel that Dirk has situated his readers in the middle of a complex tangle of social expectation.
Shipka's article on Multimodal Frameworks praises the potential of modern students who have been tasked with adapting to today's landscape of composition being found in many situations and on many platforms. Shipka encourages that students have inherited a new kind of creativity because of their experience. But I would like to ask, how much should we trust that our students can appreciate said creativity? Creativity is a high order skill that requires knowledge of conventions or standards in order to follow or disrupt these models. I think the more common instance that we can find as teachers is that student aren't normal aware of much how multimodality exists in their everyday lives.
Jeannine,
ReplyDeleteIn regard to your question on Shipka's article, I agree with you that students are not always or even usually aware of their multimodality or the creativity and decisions behind that multimodality. However, as instructors in a digital age, it is my opinion that we should enlighten students about the many modes of writing they do in their everyday lives and the affordances and constraints of those modes. We should encourage them to express themselves in writing in these modes as well, even and especially in our classrooms, as long as they are reflecting on how the mode necessarily impacts their writing. So yes, I do think students have inherited a new kind of creativity as Shipka argues, but I also agree with you that students may not recognize this and that we must point it out to them.
- Emily