Enhanced Writing = Multimodality

Portfolio Contents Home The Background Guiding Questions Portfolios, Technologies, and the Composition Classroom EPortfolios Why Portfolios? Outlining Multimodal Composition The Cs   Parallel Educational Tools First Parallel Second Parallel Third Parallel Fourth Parallel New Directions: Into Infinity (Expanding Ideas) Tangent Line 1 Tangent Line 2 Tangent Line 3 Final Reflections References

Rhetoric and composition welcomes and celebrates the opportunity to apply rhetorical strategies to new/different modes of composing and communicating.

In order to compose as an effective member of a writing public, students must be equipped with tools that allow them to critically choose appropriate media for particular contexts and audiences (WIDE, 2009).

Multimodality enhances writing in contemporary composition classrooms. Although multimodality is not necessarily digital, digital writing often implies multimodal writing. Digital writing enables students to think differently about how they compose, especially because “electronic writing […] constructs a vision of writing as an ongoing process” (Blair & Takayoshi, 1997, p. 366). The writing process becomes one fluid motion for students who compose digitally: in an electronic arena, students can download, cut, copy, and paste to merge others’ words with their own, enabling for new, remixed styles of composition (Blair & Takayoshi, 1997, p. 367; Blair, 2009). By allowing for remixed culture to surface, multimodal composition enhances students understanding of how texts are produced as well as the place of composition studies in an increasingly digital world.