Search

As players partake in video games, they interact with what James Gee has defined as “a multimodal literacy par excellence” (2007, p. 18, emphasis in original). Playing video games allows players to simultaneously interact with multiple modes of communication while vanquishing foes and gaining levels and experience. This article examines the cyborgian relationship that gamers develop with technology as they increase their digital gaming proficiencies. Reflecting upon a recent research study I conducted, I explore how a player’s gaming literacy—i.e., one’s ability to play video games and his or her proficiency navigating and using video game-related information—not only reflects Donna Haraway’s (1991) concept of a cyborg but also creates a space for gamers to develop important multimodal composition skills. More importantly, I argue that by recognizing these kinds of transferrable technological skills, instructors of multimodal composition can better prepare students—many of whom have played video games—for the digital communication practices of the twenty-first century.

Most university students have a wealth of prior writing experience from writing in digital spaces before entering their first writing class, and much of this prior experience includes making meaning using multiple modes of communication. However, these students may not perceive their digital and multimodal writing as connected to classroom practice. Because of this, they may have a challenging time using writing knowledge learned in digital spaces to help with their academic writing. This study uses survey and interview data gathered from first-year university students to help better understand what prior digital and multimodal writing experiences students have as well as how students perceive the connections between these experiences and their own classroom practice. The author suggests ways to help students see connections between their varied writing experiences in order to facilitate learning transfer between their prior digital and multimodal experiences, their experiences in the composition classroom, and their experiences in other contexts.

This article argues that composing in multiple modes, especially when accompanied by revision and self-reflection, enhances compositional fluidity and encourages the exercise of personal agency. To illustrate and support their claims, the authors describe and share student work from two non-academic multimodal composing contexts as well as one college writing class.

This article explores the means of applying Krista Ratcliffe’s theory of rhetorical listening into composing and interpreting multimodal texts to facilitate and promote communication across genders, cultures, and classes; especially between privileged classes and marginalized groups. New technologies and media channels have especially changed the ways we communicate and the ways we approach composition classrooms. Digital technologies and multiple modes provide rich rhetorical possibilities for making meanings and articulating our voices effectively. However, these voices cannot be heard if audiences/listeners do not devote effort to rhetorically listen. In this article, I elaborate on the theory of rhetorical listening and its strategies—raising awareness of identification, clarifying potential disidentification, and constructing non-identification that can be applied in listening to multimodal texts for cross-cultural communication. Finally, this paper suggests using rhetorical listening pedagogy in composition classrooms; and illustrates how the theory of rhetorical listening can be applied in multimodal composition teaching to enrich students’ multimodal experiences as well as help them promote cross-cultural communications.

In this essay, I draw from approaches in voice, music, theater, and film studies to examine four elements of sound: vocal delivery, music, special effects, and silence. Within this four-part schema, I discuss a variety of frameworks that I hope may serve as resources for those seeking to engage in both the analysis and production of sound in multimodal webtexts. Throughout the essay, I analyze several poetic Flash texts, and I consider the relationship of part-to-whole and whole-to-part when seeking to analyze and compose with multiple modes. © 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.