Ralph Santos

Writing 39C

Price

12-09-2017

Living in a Multimodal World

The writing 39 series at UCI has been a meaningful experience that has helped me grow

as a writer and an intellectual. Writing 39B was a class that opened my eyes towards the

rhetorical choices I make as a writer. 39B taught me to write with a purpose and to connect with

my intended audience. I assumed the transition from 39B to 39C would be simple. I thought it

would be the same ideas introduced in my 39B class but mostly focused on non-fictional pieces.

I was totally proven wrong. In a span of ten weeks, this class has introduced me to even more

techniques that will benefit my remaining college years and future career. As a whole, this class

has made me a better peer, writer, and researcher. This class gave me the experience to learn how

to tackle input and output from peer review effectively. It also introduced me to techniques in

using multimodal sources in my writing pieces. And finally, this class has exposed me to

research techniques with databases filled with more than what Google can ever teach me.

Compositional Game Plan

The composition process for my literary work has been a routine since high school. This

process has been very effective for me all these years, and its a process I continued to utilize for

the work assigned in this class. Writing the HCP and AP was a five-step process: brainstorming,

structuring, drafting, peer review, and revising.

 Figure 1:
Notes from a class discussion in week
one that lit a light bulb that helped me
choose a topic about the environment
for my HCP paper.

Brainstorming is the step where I try to understand the prompt to generate a topic to write

about. Ms. Price has made this process easier by guiding the class with discussions that helped

me choose a topic for my HCP and AP. The brainstorming process for this class was crucial

because I needed to choose a topic I have a great interest in researching for weeks.

Figure 2:
One of the many scholarly
articles I came across
researching for this class. These
articles helped me learn about
rising sea levels and climate
change throughout the quarter.
 Structuring is the step where I come up with a game plan on how I plan on tackling the

prompt. This step served as a guide to what I needed to research to fill my paper with meaningful

written and multimodal evidence about my topic. What made this process in this class special is

the introduction of using databases to find scholarly articles instead of googling evidence. Prior

to this class, Google was the only site I worshipped when it comes to looking for evidence on an

informative paper. Understanding databases and using scholarly articles will be something useful

in the future if I plan on researching for college or my career.

Figure 3:
A multimodal integration on my HCP (Left) and AP (Right). Being exposed to several
articles throughout the quarter with effective multimodal integrations contributed to this
significant change.

After gathering the pieces, the next step is composing my drafts. This is when I gather my

thoughts and put my ideas together. The drafting process for this class was rough at first because

of the multimodal requirement for the HCP and AP. My past writing courses since high school

mostly focused on essays that lacked multimodality. Over the years, I have been accustomed to

the notion that any writing class revolves around words written on a sheet of paper. Being

introduced to the idea of multimodality has been a mind-boggling experience despite the fact that

every day I am exposed to multimodal literary pieces like newspaper articles and blogs. Learning

how to integrate multimodal sources in my papers this quarter was an area I improved the most.

The difference between my HCP and AP multimodal integration is night and day.
 Peer review is a skill that improves as I continue to take writing classes. Each class is a

different experience due to having different peers to work with and professors introducing

different techniques for us to use. The first peer review we had for the HCP was not as successful

as the second peer review activity for the AP in my opinion. However, I think the unsuccessful

HCP peer review activity helped me improve as the reviewer and the reviewed. This quarter, I

made sure the comments I give to my peers show the good and the bad. Ms. Price helped me

understand that showing the good is just as important as pointing out the mistakes in my peers

paper. Furthermore, these experiences helped me take advantage of the comments I received

from my peers.

Figure 4:
A part of my reverse outline
activity introduced by Ms. Price in
her revision activity for the HCP.
These activities orchestrated by
Ms. Price to revise our drafts has
given me a boost in my revision
step of my composition.

Finally, the revision road to the final draft is the last and one of the most important steps

in my composition process. This is the time where I stop and read my draft carefully out loud to

pinpoint mistakes I had in my rough draft. I physically print the papers out and mark the changes

I want to be made for my final draft. Also, Ms. Price provided with revision activities

introducing me to several techniques to use in improving my essay in parts and a whole. In

addition, I use the feedback from my peers and Ms. Price to revise certain parts of my essays

making sure I get my point across to others effectively.

 The Multimodal Me

As I have mentioned time after time this quarter, the introduction to multimodality in my

literary pieces has been tough. Regardless, my multimodal integration skill this quarter is the one

that improved the most. The HCP was a rough attempt at incorporating multimodal pieces in an

essay. Looking back, I was embarrassed on how I integrated multimodal sources in my HCP. I

felt as if they were just there to meet the requirements of the prompt. I did not take advantage of

this opportunity to take my essays to another level.

Figure 5:
These are the only three multimodal pieces I chose to include in my HCP. Notice how all
three were infographics and how underwhelming the captions are. This showed there was
a need for improvement in my understanding of integrating multimodal sources
effectively.
Through several samples from articles and past essays, I was able to improve my

multimodal integrations skills for my AP paper. As mentioned, the improvement of my HCP and

AP media is evident. I made sure not to flood my audience with infographics and bland captions.

I made sure that my multimodal sources in my AP paper flowed with my words and connected to

my audience. I learned from the excellent samples from other authors that infographics are not

the only effective multimodal source available to use.

 Figure 6:
These are the images I included in my AP paper. I
made sure to include images beyond infographics and
include captivating captions that helped get my point
across for my audience, unlike the underwhelming
integration I showed on my HCP.

The Finish Line

To conclude, this quarter was a huge learning experience that helped enhanced my

writing skills. This quarter taught me valuable literary techniques that will prove to be useful

while Im college and my future career. The writing skills I improved upon this quarter like

multimodal integration serves a great purpose since writing is an art form that we will encounter

for a very long time. Doing an extensive research paper throughout the quarter gave me the

experience I need to improve upon this skill that will serve me well in the future. Moreover, the

intense research I did throughout the quarter was valuable because it expanded my knowledge of

the available resources I can use to be well informed about a variety of topics. Ultimately, I came

out of this class learning more than just about the alarming rates of the rising sea levels.