A2-a: Reading actively (multimodal texts)
Any image or multimodal text can be read—that is, carefully approached and examined to understand what it says and how it communicates it purpose and reaches its audience. When you read a multimodal text, you are often reading more than words; you might also be reading a text’s design and composition, and perhaps even its pace and volume. Reading actively requires understanding the modes—words, images, and sound—separately and then analyzing how the modes work together.
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Integrating visuals (images and some multimodal texts) can strengthen your writing.
Adding visuals as you draft: C2-b
Choosing visuals to suit your purpose: C2-b
When you read images or multimodal texts, it’s helpful to preview, annotate, and converse with the text—just as with written texts.
Previewing an image or a multimodal text
Previewing starts by looking at the basic details of an image or a multi-modal text and paying attention to first impressions. You begin to ask questions about the text’s subject matter and design, its context and creator, and its purpose and intended audience. The more you can gather from a first look, the easier it will be to dig deeper into the meaning of a text.
Annotating an image or a multimodal text
Annotating a text—jotting down observations and questions—helps you read actively to answer the basic question “What is this text about?” You’ll often find yourself annotating, rereading, and moving back and forth between reading and writing to fully understand and analyze an image or a multimodal text. A second or third reading will raise new questions and reveal details that you didn’t notice in an earlier reading.
The example in A2-b shows how one student, Ren Yoshida, annotated an advertisement.
Conversing with an image or a multimodal text
Conversing with a text—or talking back to a text and its author—helps you move beyond your early notes to form judgments about what you’ve read. You might choose to pose questions, point out something that is puzzling or provocative and why, or explain a disagreement you have with the text. In his annotations to the Equal Exchange ad, Ren Yoshida asks why two words, empowering and farmers, are in different fonts (see A2-b). And he further questions the meaning of the difference.
Many writers use a double-entry notebook to converse with a text and generate ideas for writing (see A1-a for guidelines on creating a double-entry notebook and for sample entries).