Thinking Across Modes and Media (and Baking Cake): Two Techniques for Writing with Video, Audio, and Images

Crystal VanKooten

Volume 5

Chapter Description

Using the metaphor of baking a cake, this chapter offers students in college writing courses two techniques for writing with video, audio, and images: integration and juxtaposition.1 Knowing more about these techniques enables students to approach the analysis and composition of their own and others’ multimodal texts with more specificity and control. Drawing on work from writing professors and digital designers, the essay defines and discusses integration and cross-modal reinforcement, as well as sequential and simultaneous juxtaposition, using one student-authored video composition as an example. Overall, students are encouraged to think critically and concretely about integration and juxtaposition in the multimodal texts they consume and create as they work to become more skilled and rhetorically-sensitive digital writers. 

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