13/10, 14/10 - They Say, I Say and Multimodality, Intermodality

 

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 concept of 'They say' and 'I say' in essays. The understanding of how the demarcation between other people's opinions and our opinions works and how they go together is important to write good academic essays. Nikhil Sir sent us sample works and asked us to identify the 'They say' and 'I say' in the essay. We colour-coded the essay by ourselves and sent it to him in class. we also did the same activity to identify quoting sandwiches in another sample essay. 

The next class went on in the same vein. We kicked off the class with a discussion of multimodal writing. We were then asked to split into groups and discuss how we can improve our essays in terms of multimodality. I was able to read and analyse my group-mates' essays and also receive very good feedback for my own essay. This activity made me think about how I can make my essay better, more interactive and interesting in general.