ESL Multimodal Writing and Composing Website
- Maker: Rafaela Luzuriaga
- Genre: Website
- Level: Graduate
- Program: Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
- Course: WRIT 5340: Studies in Multimodality and Digital Media
- Instructor: Dr. Eric Mason
- Semester Created: Winter 2023
Description
This project is a continuation of my Manifesto project. For my “Going Pro” project I wanted to take the concept of my manifesto, in which I encourage free use of new media tools for international students in English composition classes, and make a more practical and useful home for it in the form of a website. The website is intended for students to use and for educators to encourage, all in all facilitating and helping ESL students’ experience studying abroad. It homes the original flyer, the message of the manifesto, and the list of tools with links to lead the students to trusted sites to use new media in their composing process.
Reflection
My ESL Multimodal Writing and Composing website is influenced by some of the reading I did in class this semester, including scholarship by Laura Gonzales and Cynthia Selfe. These articles are listen in a section of the website titled “The Research,” because they were imperative in inspiring the creation of the website. As with the manifesto, Gonzales’ piece kickstarted my passion for encouraging the use of new media technologies, tools, and modalities in the process of translating and composing. Like Gonzales, I think that translation as well as composing in English as a second language “entails multimodal activities that can be further recognized in rhetoric and composition scholarship and pedagogy” (94). Composition, I think, should embrace the multimodality of composing as an international student with multiple languages and literacies at their disposal. This is why the “professional” aspect of this project was significant in creating the website, because it lends credence and professionalism to something useful to the field at large. In terms of breaking a few conventions, I took inspiration from Selfe, whose piece in response to G. Douglas Atkins I consider when challenging any convention in the field of composition. Her repetitive quote, “not one literacy, but many,” and “not one tool, but many” (411), ran through my head throughout the entire process of creating the site. Sometimes, calling it like it is and challenging outdated notions that seek to keep our discipline stagnant is necessary.
Gonzales, Laura. “Translating Modalities: Interactions between Digital and Alphabetic Modes in Professional Translation Work.” Writing Changes, 2020, p. 83-99.
Selfe, Cynthia. “To His Nibs, G. Douglas Atkins—Just in Case You’re Serious about Your Not-So-Modest Proposal.” JAC, 2000, p. 405-413.
