15/09, 16/09 - Peer Reviews and Multimodal Writing

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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 very helpful. She was very patient and answered our questions incredibly well with relatable examples that solidified our understanding of the concepts we were doubtful about. She was very engaging and I very much enjoyed the discussion we had with her. 

The second class of the week introduced a new avenue of writing - multimodal writing. Multimodal literacy is of paramount importance in today's day and age; one cannot survive in this technology-forward world without some form of tech literacy. Multimodal writing includes using various mediums that are not limited to writing to get one's point across. We discussed the four modes of learning; commonly abbreviated to VARK - Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing and Kinaesthetic. All learners have a dominant mode of learning, but everyone uses all the forms of learning in varying degrees to understand concepts. Hence learning material must be multimodal to facilitate all forms of learners. We analysed imagery and messages of various visual messages. We ended the class with an activity to find any form of multimodal work and put it up for discussion. The class outlined the scope and importance of multimodality in learning and education and gave me an idea of what constitutes multimodal learning and writing. 


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