Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key

Abstract

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. ometimes, you know, you have a moment. For us, this is one such moment. In coming together at CCCC, we leave our institutional sites of work; we gather together-we quite literally conveneat a not-quite-ephemeral site of disciplinary and professional work. I come to this podium this morning fully conscious of the rather daunting responsibility attached to this occasiona responsibility heightened by what my distinguished predecessors have said in their Chair's Addresses.-Anne Ruggles Gere 1994 At this opening session in particular, inhabited with the echoes of those who came before and anticipating the voices of those who will follow-we pause and we commence. We have a moment These moments: they aren't all alike, nor are they equal. And how we value them is in part a function of how we understand them, how we connect them to other moments, how we anticipate the moments to come. For compositionists, of this time and of this place, this moment-this moment right now-is like none other.

The class blog : Chinese EFL non-English major college students' online writing experiences

“…As Yancey (2004) states, never before has the development of writing outside the academy differed so greatly from the composition inside, and that never before have the technologies of writing contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres (p.298).…”

Multimodal and print composition : an examination of instructors and students transferring rhetorical knowledge in first-year composition.

“…In published research on transfel1'ing knowledge of writing skills, knowledge transfer was most sLlccessful when writers were able to make connections within the context of the writing situations-when the writers had a clear sense of the expectations of their discourse community and thus knew the appropriate conventions for the audience and context-and least successful when the writers saw no connections in the context, such as moving from a technical writing assignment in a writing course to a writing task in the workplace where they ~ It the discourse community was new and different from their academic discourse community (Herrington, 1985 ;McCarthy, J987;Doheny-Farina, 1989;Ackerman, 1991 ;Haas, 1994;Beaufol1, 1998;Kryder, 1999;Mila & Sanmarti , 1999;Ford. 2(04 Multimodal and print compositions differ contextually as is illustrated by all of the scholars who talk about the newness of multimodal composition to the field and its difference from print (New London Group, 1996;Kress, 1999;Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001;Daley, 2003;Yancey, 2004). Moreover, intuitively for students, multimodality is associated with everyday literacies while the print text essay is most often associated with the classroom and academic composition.…”

“…Scholars argued that composing multimodal texts offers students the chance to get in step in the classroom with their current composing practices outside the classroom (such as Web Logs, instant messaging, etc.) (Yancey, 2004) as well as helping the students prepare themselves technologically for future employment opportunities (Callow, 2006). Elizabeth Daley advised that "those who are truly literate in the twenty-first century will be those who learn to both read and write the multimedia language of the screen" (2003 , p. 34).…”

The ground beneath our feet

“…This project attempts to acknowledge Yancey's (2004b) assertion that "literacy today is in the midst of tectonic change. … [We] compose words and images and create audio files on web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs… and no doubt in whatever genre will emerge in the next ten minutes" (p. 298).…”