![\"Multilingual](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/printscreen3-copy.jpg\")
<\/a>My post will reflect on multimodal composition outside of a FYC classroom, in a senior-level\u00a0study abroad course sequence that features multilingual research. The educational and\u00a0institutional context for this case study is a Global Studies minor that involves cross-cultural\u00a0immersion experience (study abroad), language study, and global content courses. On their study\u00a0abroad course sequence, students first take an online class while they are away on a semester\u00a0abroad, and upon return, enroll in a Capstone seminar in which they work on a multimodal cross-cultural research project.<\/p>\n
It was not until after a couple of semesters of teaching the study abroad sequence that I realized\u00a0that, in fact, what I am teaching is multimodal and multilingual composition. This realization\u00a0came with a number of other exciting insights about the multiplicity of disciplinary and\u00a0pedagogical layers involved in my work with Global Studies students. Spanning different media\u00a0of expression, various research methods–from statistical analysis to ethnographic observation to\u00a0qualitative text and visual analysis (to name but a few)–the work that students in GLST do\u00a0foregrounds writing and thinking at the crossroads of contexts.<\/p>\n
My most important conclusion that comes from teaching this course is a growing certainty that\u00a0multimodal and multilingual writing naturally, logically co-exist, especially in research-based\u00a0composition. When performing multilingual research, students most often reach out beyond the\u00a0single modality of text to include various modes and media as objects of research: titles and\u00a0captions in different languages, memes, instructive signs with illustrations, car license number\u00a0plates, street and place names, advertisement slogans along with images and soundtrack, etc.\u00a0These are usually included in the Capstone project itself, therefore allowing students to write\u00a0\u201cwith\u201d as well as write \u201cabout\u201d: writing with sound, images, and inclusion of multilingual items\u00a0such as quotes, diagrams with statistics, images of signs in different languages, etc. For example,\u00a0one project analyzed the viewer\u2019s gaze and performativity in a photographic portfolio of street\u00a0performers in Leipzig, and included such multimodal\/ multilingual elements as photos, a video\u00a0clip, and excerpts from a tourist brochure in German. Another explored the visual exploitation of\u00a0the female body on Italian television in relation to the political and socio-cultural discourse on\u00a0gender within the country. Yet another looked at cultural conventions of getting a point across in\u00a0social service announcements and road signs in Europe and New Zealand. All of these examples\u00a0employ visual and discourse analysis and focus on culturally-specific rhetorical strategies of\u00a0persuasion and argumentation. In other words, multimodality and multilingual writing comprise\u00a0both the form and content of composition.<\/p>\n Multimodality (a term close to, but different from, multimedia) foregrounds perception; likewise,\u00a0cross-lingual research revolves around culturally-determined differences in perception and\u00a0judgment. Recent studies of the connection between culture and sensory perception open up rich\u00a0possibilities for imagining alternative ways of knowing through activating more modalities of\u00a0language and sensory stimulation. As they navigate between alternate subject positions\u00a0encountered in their research and learn to appreciate culturally-different perception of the same\u00a0issue, students develop critical thinking skills. This happens through interrelated processes of\u00a0alienation and immersion: alienation from single-modality, monolingual discourse with its\u00a0underlying monocultural perspective; immersion into alternative ways of knowledge and\u00a0expression. The study abroad environment facilitates what I believe to be ideal conditions for\u00a0broadening students\u2019 cognitive agency. In their multimodal projects, students mirror the sensory\u00a0re-engagement with reality that they experience as they see, hear, smell, and think in new ways\u00a0throughout their study abroad. The world is a text written in many languages and multiple\u00a0formats. As they get acquainted with the new culture, they recognize differences in the way\u00a0various cultures categorize and engage with fragments of reality, from everyday and seemingly insignificant moments such as culturally-determined perception of time, etiquette, personal\u00a0space, etc, to more overtly political issues, such as social hierarchy, national identity, and\u00a0cultural othering.<\/p>\n This experience inevitably translates into a more complex and reflexive way of writing. On the\u00a0level of form, students recognize and practice their power to employ visual and interactive\u00a0rhetoric together with more conventional media of expression. On the level of verbal text,\u00a0multimodal\/ translingual composition often manifests itself through code-switching, creative\u00a0experimentation with linearity of narration, and shifting between different cultural conventions\u00a0of structuring an argument that scholars of critical contrastive rhetoric are familiar with.\u00a0Ultimately, composition at the crossroads of formats and cultural contexts foregrounds\u00a0metacognition, shifting the focus from \u201cmaking a point\u201d to discovering a point, from expression\u00a0to creation of meaning. The thinking that happens is inductive rather than deductive, prompted\u00a0by honest experiential discovery that often overthrows habitual stereotypes and dominant ideas.<\/p>\n I imagine this post to enter a broader discourse on defining interdisciplinary connections and\u00a0productive collaborations between different components of writing at the crossroads. I believe\u00a0that questions and possibilities raised by multimodal\/ multilingual composition are relevant to\u00a0conversations in writing across the disciplines, multimodal pedagogies, L2 education,\u00a0multilingualism in education, internationalization of the curriculum, and possibly many more\u00a0areas of academic and pedagogical inquiry, almost all of which are isolated from one another.\u00a0Internationalization of the curriculum is especially left out of many disciplinary conversations,\u00a0exactly because it is not rooted in any single discipline; therefore it is most often addressed from\u00a0the administrative, rather than pedagogical, perspective. Meanwhile, there are exciting pedagogic\u00a0discoveries being made in the field, as well as productive challenges relevant for academics\u00a0across the disciplines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My post will reflect on multimodal composition outside of a FYC classroom, in a senior-level\u00a0study abroad course sequence that features multilingual research. The educational and\u00a0institutional context for this case study is a Global Studies minor that involves cross-cultural\u00a0immersion experience (study abroad), language study, and global content courses. On their study\u00a0abroad course sequence, students first take<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":9197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[152,155,196],"ppma_author":[1229],"class_list":{"0":"post-8533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog-carnival-5","8":"tag-multilingualism","9":"tag-multimodal-composition","10":"tag-study-abroad"},"authors":[{"term_id":1229,"user_id":57,"is_guest":0,"slug":"tashadastra","display_name":"Natalia Andrievskikh","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4e94d5e4cf2e6dfe75214d34fb67c09a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Andrievskikh","first_name":"Natalia","job_title":"","description":"Natalia Andrievskikh is Instructor of Global Studies and a PhD Candidate at the Department of Comparative Literature, Binghamton University."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10440,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533\/revisions\/10440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8533"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>