Within the 20th Century, many changes happen in the world due to the dominant of technology. As a result, in the field of literacy, the forms of text, knowledge, and learning has been changed to adapt the new changes in the field of technology and respond to the need of the society. Gunther Kress, in his article “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning,” he argued that the new forms redefine the role of author and reader and transform the process of reading and learning; however, on the other hand, they take away authorship and create crisis for both reader and author. I totally agree with Kress on both issues of gains and losses, and I will present evidences to support those claims.
At the beginning, Kress talks about the background of his argument. He states that the recent changes in social, cultural, technological, economic, and political values are the reasons for changes in representation and communication. In effect, multimodality is slowly integrated
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Because there is a sense of insecure of the author about the visitors/readers since they come from different cultures with different interest, the author need to provide information that is in multiple modes creative ways then leave it to the visitors to create their own knowledge. For example, in their article, three teachers talk about how they successfully redefine writing into composing and let their student find the best way that they want to compose their ideas by not just writing but using multiple modes like image and sound (Herrington, 2009). Likewise, the readers need to learn how to engage the text in different modes like image and sound. In that way, readers are becoming more active in reading. For instance, in his article, Crider talks about how he used visual literacy in his astronomy class that made his student became more interested in learning astronomy (Crider,
Books today are everywhere. We find them in many households, libraries and schools all around the globe. We find many different types of books; from stories to educational textbooks, we regard them today as sources of knowledge and amusement. But it wasn’t the case before 1455. That year, one of the greatest inventions in human history was revealed to the world; Gutenberg’s printing press. This press allowed printing in massive quantity, spreading books all around Europe and the rest of the world at a fast rate. The printing press had many positive consequences on society. At first, it standardized grammar and spelling, and then introduced the mass production of books. It finally inspired future printing technologies around the world.
In the article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy,” writer Clive Thompson argues that the widespread use of technology and social media does not make kids illiterate and unable to form coherent sentences, but instead, keeps them actively writing and learning. Thompson’s article is based off of a study done by Andrea Lunsford, a writing professor at Stanford University. Thompson agrees with Lunsford that the use of social media and the Internet allow students to be creative and get better at writing. In his article, Thompson quotes John Sutherland, an English professor at University College of London, to inform the audience of the opposite side of the argument. He states, “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have
For students to share responses and express a point of view they must have a deeper understanding of the literary experiences that the text delivers. This understanding and learning can be developed though a class discussion with key guiding questions. Marzaro states that a teachers role during a critical-input experience is to “ask students questions that require them to elaborate on the content, engage students in activities that require them to summarise and re-present the content, and engage students in activities that require them to reflect on their learning” (Marzaro, 2007, p. 184). Students learn best when engaged, therefore the multimodal text is the primary source of engagement, the hook of the lesson.
Although the greater picture is that reading is fundamental, the two authors have a few different messages that they seek to communicate to their audiences. “The Joy of Reading and Writing” depicts how reading serves as a mechanism to escape the preconceived notions that constrain several groups of people from establishing themselves and achieving success in their lifetimes. “Reading to Write,” on the other hand, offers a valuable advice to aspiring writers. The author suggests that one has to read, read, and read before he or she can become a writer. Moreover, he holds an interesting opinion concerning mediocre writing. He says, “Every book you pick has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones” (p.221). Although these two essays differ in their contents and messages, the authors use the same rhetorical mode to write their essays. Both are process analyses, meaning that they develop their main argument and provide justification for it step by step. By employing this technique, the two authors create essays that are thoughtful, well supported, and easy to understand. In addition, Alexie and King both add a little personal touch to their writings as they include personal anecdotes. This has the effect of providing support for their arguments. Although the two essays have fairly different messages, the authors make use of anecdotes and structure their writing in a somewhat similar
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
In response to Mitoko Rich, “Literacy Debate – Online, R U Really Reading?” in the 21st century, children are learning via different sources, whether through textbooks, internet, blogs, etc. Therefore, it was not surprising to read what is mentioned in this article. Reading in the digital age is causing a debate, especially in regards to students. After reading the article, questions came to mind such as; is it possible that digital text can cause more harm than
Writers have different way of getting their point across, for example in the article “is google making us stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. He makes the argument that Google is a convenient tool but is making us less able to process deep information. He use ethos, pathos, logos and tone to prove his thesis in the article. In other words he inform coming generation the consequence of overuses internet. The title and the way he started draw is reader into the article.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
The issue that if literacy in the form of writing is not maintained and drops its dominance in this new media era, semiotic work may become eluded in the classroom (Skaar (2009). The understanding of the influence of digital media inside the classroom explains why the didactic literacies pedagogy, which integrates learning by writing, may be effective during literacy teaching. However, if didactic liter...
Literature plays an important role as a part of the cultural heritage. Thus, literature is the soul of our civilization, the center of our religion, and the machine we can travel back in the time of our old civilizations. In addition, literary works are able to take the readers beyond the limited experiences of readers’ lives. They show the lives of others. The literary works covey the social, political, and cultural backgrounds of the time when the stories or novels were written. The author of the book, “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes expresses that authors are always the agents of their times. According to the statement conducted by Roland, to get the fully understanding of the text, he recommends
Looking back over the course of the semester, I feel that I learned many new and interesting uses for technology within the classroom – both for classrooms that have a lot of technology and for classrooms that are limited with technology. For the majority of the class, we utilized William Kists’ book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age (2010), which provided multiple modes of instruction that both utilized and/or created technology. One of the first things that I remember, and consequently that stuck with me through the course’s entirety, is that individuals must treat everything as a text. Even a garden is a text. The statement made me change the way that I traditionally viewed Language Arts both as a student and as a teacher, as I very narrowly saw literature and works of the like as texts only; however, by considering nearly anything as a text, one can analyze, study, and even expand his/her knowledge. Kist (2010) states that society is “experiencing a vast transformation of the way we “read” and “write,” and a broadening of the way we conceptualize “literacy” (p. 2). In order to begin to experience and learn with the modern classroom and technologically advanced students, individuals must begin to see new things as literature and analyze those things in a similar manner.
With every new advancement in technology the roles of the writer and the roles of the reader are changed; sometimes it is a small change and other times it can be a drastic transformation. In this modern age it seems the role that the reader or the audience plays is shifting significantly. I don’t think there has ever been a point in history where there was as much interactivity as there is currently. The main reason for this change in the reader’s role is the rapidly growing amount of hypertext being used.
To understand multimodality, I first to need define mode. Mode simply refers to a set of different techniques to allow the reader to achieve a deeper meaning out of content. Mode isn’t just communication but the connection between these resources and how they interact with one another. Mavers also notes that “what a mode is continues to be subject to debate” in part because modes are “socially and culturally shaped”. Information from this text suggests that there are not hard and fast rules for what counts as a mode. Instead, particular groups are able to define what is and what is not a mode. In their threshold concept, Cheryl E Ball and Colin Charlton point to five modes: “linguistic, aural, visual, gestural, and spatial”. The couple of examples are just a couple of the many modes that can be present in a work. In short, multimodality is the use of multiple modes within a work to greater enhance the topic a writer is trying to convey.
Literature has changed over time. “The “death of print” has been much heralded over the past decade, precipitated by the rising accessibility of devices like tablets and smartphones that have made the electronic medium cheaper and more universal (1).” Literature has evolved
The particular importance of networked textuality—that is, textuality written, stored, and read on a computer network—appears when technology transforms readers into reader-authors or “wreaders,” because any contribution, any change in the web created by one reader, quickly becomes available to other readers. This ability to write within a particular web in turn transforms comments from private notes, such as one takes in margins of ones’ own copy of a text, into public statements than, especially within educational settings, have powerfully democratizing effects (Landow 14).