Writing, Academia And Everything In Between

This week was all about reviews. The first class of the week had us in partner activity. Nikhil Sir asked us to split into pairs, read each other's multimodal essays and write a review on them. He also provided an extensive rubric for us to follow, complete with his signature memes.  I partnered with Silka Jayapadme, who had written her essay on the topic Should India Have A National Language? . I was pretty impressed with the way she had written and handled the concept of multimodality in her essay, as I made clear in my review. Her multimodal additions were also very interesting and added to the information in her essay. The activity prompted me to critically examine an essay and carefully analyse the conception and thought process that goes into an essay and how it translates to the reader.  The next class went along the same vein. We tried to concentrate more on critically analysing what makes a good argumentative essay. Nikhil Sir provided us with an explanation of what a...

  This was quite a week. It began with a reflective writing assignment. We were required to read a module on Visual Meaning Making and write a reflection on it with particular emphasis on Visual Representation and Communication, Perceptual and Mental Images and the Visual Design Process. Reading the material, in all honesty, was an ordeal. Most of the sections were very long-winded and I could not make sense of a lot of them. The texts were also blatantly un-visual for a module on making visual meaning. Quite frankly, I did not enjoy reading them. We also had to make our first argumentative essays multimodal and improve it in any way we feel suitable.  The first class started off on this note. I was a bit relieved to find out that it was not just me who had a problem with the essays. Comprehension was hard for almost everyone. We requested more time for the assignment which we did get. We then moved on to discussing writing styles in academic essays. We talked about the concep...

  This week's classes focussed on multiliteracies. Multiliteracy refers to understanding and manipulating various individual modes to suit one's needs.  Multiliteracy is important in any kind of sphere in today's world. We began the discussion with a bit of history - how academic communities like the New London Group envisioned a shift in the modes of education and how it unfolded. We then moved on to how multiliteracy works and how we can use it ourselves. We also learned that there is a specific 'grammar' for multiliteracies which revolves around its reference, agency, structure, context and interest. Further, we briefly discussed how to correctly quote points while citing an article or author. We went back to our previous classwork essay on two-hour classes and quoted a source in it. This exercise was good practice in how to correctly execute the 'sandwich method' of quoting i.e. introducing the quote, actually quoting it, and then backing it up and expla...

 This week took us back to quite a few previous sessions. The first class of the week took us through constructing an argumentative essay. Nikhil Sir reiterated the five aspects essential to an academic essay's structure - introduction, arguments, counterarguments, qualifiers and conclusions. This took me back to my own previous attempt at writing an argumentative essay. We were then asked to write an argumentative essay in class on the topic 'Are Two-Hour Classes Necessary?'. We got into pairs and discussed possible arguments, evidence and counter-arguments. We went through all the processes of writing an essay, from brainstorming, to free-writing, to editing. We also read each other's essays and gave peer feedback.  The next class was a showcase of our multimodal posters. We made our multimodal poster with inspiration from our previous poster on Canva and iMovie. We used visual, aural and linguistic modes on our poster. We added a newspaper article about the Kerala fl...

This week began with a reiteration of multimodality. We were required to choose a multimodal text and analyse how its multimodality adds to the message it hopes to convey. I decided to use two multimodal texts - an advertisement for  StayUncle and a meme about a Kpop band, Stray Kids.  I chose to analyse this advertisement because of the social relevance and inclusivity it portrayed. It was also interesting in terms of its multimodality - the advertisement featured only a simple blurred background and a caption, but the details made its message of it very clear and powerful. The company's subtle approach to this topic is perfectly done.  I was particularly struck by how much the visual and spatial elements of the advertisement added to the linguistic facet of it. The gestures in the image were also detrimental to getting the point of the advertisement across. The multimodality in the text, hence, makes it more effective than a simple linguistic write-up.   ...

  This week was about structures in academic writing. We had already written an essay with our limited knowledge of writing practices in academic writing. This week focused on making writing better and more interactive.   The first class took us back to our first attempt at writing an academic essay. Nikhil Sir recapped the Ethos, Pathos and Logos lesson before introducing the concept of Toulmin arguments. There is no concrete formula to writing academic essays - all of these concepts exist to make the process of essay writing easier. We then split into groups based on linguistic categories - I was put into a group with three other Malayalam speakers. We were asked to review each others' essays and provide feedback on the same. The feedback I got from my peer group was invaluable and gave me many ideas I could implement to improve my essay. We were also joined by two other research scholars, Prashant Sir and Chelsea ma'am. Chelsea ma'am spent time with our team and was ve...