The Writing 45 course objectives in summary indicate that students should learn to use different medias in order to effectively communicate different messages, like using multimedia to write a memoir. Assignments have helped prepare for the use of multimedia, like the Me in Six Words, “The Danger of a Single Story,” blog posts, etc. Multimodal means using a different method of communication, for example audio would be different than visual. 

 

Artifact 1

The “End of Week 4 Blog Post” where I reflected on if writing should be formulaic, including the paraburger, was an example of using multimedia (Canvas). I used text as well as images to help me learn more about the writing process. For example, doing this assignment helped me learn a learning target of Writing 45, “Define key course concepts related to genre, rhetorical situation, critical reading, and the writing process” (course objectives). By doing the blog through different medias, I could better understand the writing process as creative, and one that requires academic decision making that can mean taking risks. For example, by explaining through text that the paraburger can be formulaic in certain cases and not in others, and explaining through image an example of a strict paraburger, I helped visualize an example of formulaic writing. Visualization helps one remember things. Formulaic writing connects to learning about the writing process, because then I better recognized that writing should involve academic risk taking and decision making, which a formula does not allow for. 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                      Paraburger: Picture Mode in Blog 

 

Reading and writing across media has helped me become more knowledgeable about home, family, and self because I am reminded that everyone’s home, family, and self are not the same, or not one formula. Everyone has different experiences, which can shape their experiences in different ways. 

​

Making this multimedia blog helped me learn more about storytelling because I realized that a story does not need to follow one formula. For example, the text and picture helped strengthen who formulaic writing can be bad, which I can then apply to the memoir to make it more unique. 

 

​

Artifact 2

The Me in Six Words presentation utilizes a few forms of media, including images, audio (verbally presenting), and text (one word per slide) to explain six qualities of a person. Creating this multimedia helped me practice the Habit of Mind “Creativity – The ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas” (Student Learning Outcomes/Learning Objectives). In many assignments, I only describe something through one method, text. However, with this presentation, I would have to express myself through audio and images as well. This forces me to expand, for example, on thinking about how a picture can also represent a concept. For example, with my Exploring slide, I could not think of an image that showed me wanting to explore new things as it is a vague concept. Thus, I had to look at the issue in a new way, by finding a picture that showed something new to me, rather than a picture that showed me actively exploring. 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

                                                                               Using Pictures to Increase Creativity 

 

Doing this assignment made me practice describing myself because although I feel that I know myself well, I had to organize what I knew to present it. However, I do not think that creating the Me in Six Words multimedia helped me significantly because I have already done presentations about myself for other classes, so this assignment was just one of many that had similar effects. 

​

From doing this assignment, I was reminded that storytelling can be told effectively through different forms of art. For example, adding pictures to the slide helped portray a tone that otherwise may have not been portrayed. For example, in the sustainability picture, you could see refill stations for different soaps, but you could also see me smiling, which indicates that I really do care about sustainability. 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

                                                                                           Pictures Show Tone

 

Conclusion #1

Multimedia has showed me more about the rhetoric of family, home, and self (identity, language, ethnicity). I realized that one can express their story in many different ways, through audio, text, spacial relations, etc. For example, I had not considered Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” a personal essay before, but now, I realize that she talks about a few incidents in her childhood and college life to tell her story about how she is from Nigeria and had happy moments in her middle class family. However, this is not in the form of a book, which I had previously pictured as the only form of memoirs. This reminds me of metacognitive skills, for example, strengthening recall by associating a concept that you read with a visual. This utilizes two medias, text and picture. Thus, using multimedia as opposed to one media may strengthen understanding for the reader. 

​

The previous multimedia assignment also connect to the IP Multimodal memoir assignment, as this assignment utilizes different medias like text and visuals to show the memoir, similar to the journal that we will replicate. My memoir specifically replicates Narratively, which uses a comical introductory picture, with a small textbox to foreshadow the message. Using both medias helps the reader easily create a concept of what they will be reading about, allowing the brain to create a framework around which to organize the rest of the essay. Additionally, Narratively uses images between major parts of the memoir, which also helps the reader further understand and remember major turning points in the memoir. 

​

Artifact #1

The IP Multimodal Memoir - Audience Analysis assignment during week 8 helped me better learn the course objective of “analyz[ing] relationships between medium, genre, purpose, audience, and context in appropriate genre models” (Student Learning Outcomes / Course Objectives). By doing the audience analysis assignment for Narratively, I found both psychographics and demographics of the readers. This helped me cater my memoir more effectively to the audience by making sure my message/purpose is relevant to them, which is also supported by this learning outcome. For example, the Narratively audience is liberal and wants to look at diverse viewpoints, and my message is to keep on learning so that you can protect your rights. 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                       Message is not Completely Catered to Audience

​

​

​

​

​

​

           

                                                                              Less Emphasis on Family for Audience​

​

This demonstrates strengthening of writing skills and helps develop my rhetoric because I can market my writing in general. Specifically, I am not aware that the audience should be interested in my message, and that I can emphasize certain parts of my message to do so. 

​

This learning has also developed my ethos because I strengthen my credibility by adhering to the conventions of academic writing of connecting purpose, audience, and author. Without doing this assignment, I might have not known the importance of connecting the different components of the memoir, meaning that I would have not adhered to the writing conventions of a memoir, thus weakening my credibility. 

​

This learning can be applied to future courses because, as stated above, I can better market my writing in other courses or in my future career by taking into consideration what the audience will consider. Thus, I can alter my message slightly to make my writing more effective. 

 

Artifact #2

In my week 8 connect assignment, Using Effective Word Choice and Eliminating Wordiness, my most challenging concepts were “identifying constructions such as ‘there is/are,’ ‘there was/were,’ and ‘it was’ in a sentence and “revising the sentence to get rid of these constructions, and using varied sentences” (Connect). By completing more questions on these assignments as I got more of them wrong, I was able to practice the concepts more to improve on reducing unnecessary words by better identifying construction starting with it or there. This helped me meet the Language and Grammar section of the IP Memoir Rubric, specifically, “it is easy to read and understand … [and] It is evident that the writer has proofread the essay for …mistakes in composition” (WR 45/50: IP Memoir Project Rubric AY 2022-2023). For example, the reader can more easily understand writing if it is not overly redundant and there are few grammar mistakes as this strays from the expected convention. 

​

​

​

​

                                                                                                 

  "It was" Wordy

              

​

​

​

​

                                                                                   Concise Language in Final Memoir 

​

Although I further developed this skill, I still ended up getting a 13% accuracy rate, so I have not fully developed it. I can still strengthen this skill in my writing by practicing more on Connect during the summer. However, I have still improved this skill, and it has overall made my rhetoric stronger and more at level. Eliminating unnecessary words is important in creating concise writing, which is more effective in conveying message. 

​

This assignment has allowed me to become a stronger member of the Writing 45 discourse community because I can better follow academic writing genre conventions, that include concision in writing. 

​

Concision is important in most writing, even outside of Writing 45 and outside of college because it makes writing more accurate and easier to read. 

 

Artifact #3

The IP Writing Practice: Developing Your Characters assignment where we had to describe one - two characters’ physical attributes in ways that portray tone towards the character, or a character’s actions to show their personality, helped me meet the IP Memoir Rubric section of Genre and Medium, specifically, “follow[ing] the conventions of the genre,” memoir. One memoir convention is having fictional story elements like character development and description. Before this assignment, I saw character description as unnecessary, but I did not realize that the audience could not visualize the characters of the memoir, thus making the storytelling process less effective. Thus, with this assignment, I added a physical and personality description of my sister and dad who were not main characters in this story, and added more description of my mom through what she did and how she looked. For example, I added, “My sister, sitting to my right, was a head shorter than me, and had a sloppy ponytail hiding a black bush of uncombed hair,” whereas before I only said that she was sitting with me in a rickshaw. This allowed me to better show my story. 

​

​

​

​

No Character Description

​

​

​

​

 

 

Creating Mental Images Through Description

​

Learning the importance of description helped my understanding of how to use rhetoric because I now understand that memoirs and stories specifically should create imagery in the reader’s mind to be effective in storytelling. 

By learning this memoir convention, I am learning about more writing conventions, this becoming a stronger member of the Writing 45 discourse community. 

​

Outside of the classroom, this assignment has helped me see writing as a more creative process because it offers unique methods of doing something, which is artistic. With more decision making process, the writer has more authority and power over their work. 

 

Artifact #4

For my second memoir draft, Adrian Sandoval commented, “Your grammar and sentence structure can definitely be improved as some commas and sentences could be rearranged or shaped into different sentences.” During the in-person peer review session, this was elaborated on, and I saw that I could enhance some of my word choice to make the language more concise. This helped me better meet the Language and Grammar section of the IP Memoir Rubric, specifically having an, “easy to read and understand[able paper] … [and] It is evident that the writer has proofread the essay for …mistakes in composition” (WR 45/50: IP Memoir Project Rubric AY 2022-2023). For example, originally I wrote, “I, now a deflated balloon, willed a storm” (1st draft). However, to make this less confusing and wordy, I changed it to “A deflated balloon, I willed a storm” (final memoir). I can apply this to the future because in all writing, concision is important. Thus, although I have not mastered concision as much as I want to, I will continue trying to be more concise in my writing throughout my life. 

 

​

​

Original Wordiness

​

​

Concision in Final Draft ​

​

On Shunquan Wang’s second draft, I commented, “you can include some more background on the culture and politics of the time that is relevant to you.” Reading Shunquan’s memoir, I saw that he included family context relevant to him, but there could have been more information on the political issues of the time as well. Giving this peer review helped me meet the IP Memoir Rubric’s Historical and Cultural Context section because I then “Ma[de] connections to the author’s social, cultural, historical, and/or political dimensions of his or her identity and experience” (Rubric). I realized that connect the message to the political and cultural context of the piece makes the message more impactful, thus I added “When I went to India, it was 2019, and under Trump’s presidency the government shutdown to push for a wall that would limit immigrants…” to help connect message and context. This concept can be applied to any stories that I write in the future. 

​

​

​

​

​

Political Context Development

 

Peer review is important to get new perspectives to show how to improve your writing. I would not have caught these mistakes had I not done or received peer review. 

 

Final Reflection

The main message of my memoir about family and identity. Specifically, it is important to accept others the way they are, and it is important to grow and learn about the world so that people’s identities are not stereotyped or limited. Being open minded is important because the world is currently unjust, and new information is always being found in terms of injustices and how to better fight them. 

​

By accomplishing this project, I feel that I have become a better storyteller in terms of better developing characters, scenery, and writing more concisely. 

​

I was not sure if I should explicitly state the political context of the time in my memoir as I did not see any other students do it, however, I took a risk to make it clear. Thus, I am not sure if this appropriately follows the Cultural and Historical Context section of the rubric. Additionally, I think that I met the Language and Grammar section of the IP Memoir Rubric, but I could have better met it by being even more concise. I think that although I fixed a few examples of wordiness, I could not identify the examples of wordiness until they were pointed out. I would need to practice this skill more on Connect or elsewhere. Finally, I believe that I have met the Genre and Medium section of the rubric, but perhaps not fully. I did not fully follow the Narratively web page format because the font is slightly different, and the heading picture at the top is not spanning the full page like it does in Narratively.