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Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters

After having been marginalized for a long time as a second-class genre or “the poor country cousin of papers” (Swales & Feak, 2000), academic posters have recently received remarkable attention as a special multimodal genre that is indispensable for the membership of the academic community. In line...

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Main Author: Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
Format: Thesis
Published: AUC Knowledge Fountain 2021
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access_status_str Open Access
author Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
author_browse Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
author_facet Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
author_sort Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
collection Thesis
description After having been marginalized for a long time as a second-class genre or “the poor country cousin of papers” (Swales & Feak, 2000), academic posters have recently received remarkable attention as a special multimodal genre that is indispensable for the membership of the academic community. In line with the currently growing interest in multimodal writing, the present study seeks to contribute to the limited body of knowledge on academic posters in two ways: first by investigating the textual and visual communicative strategies employed by novice multimodal writers to facilitate the comprehension of their multimodal texts and guide readers through their discourse and second by exploring the perceptions of those young multimodal writers towards that special genre. To accomplish the first objective, a corpus of 100 academic posters gathered from freshmen university students enrolled in a second language research writing course was compiled and analyzed textually and visually drawing mainly on the framework of D’Angelo (2016a) that distinguishes between interactive and interactional resources. To fulfill the second objective, a questionnaire was filled out by 66 students, and four interviews were carried out. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the analysis. Descriptive statistics was employed in the multimodal analysis of the posters as well as the analysis of the questionnaire responses, and a qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to interpret the responses of the interviewees. The quantitative textual and visual analysis revealed a clear dominance of the interactive resources and, to some extent, a lack of making the best use of all the available visual resources. The analysis of the self-reported data unveiled that young multimodal writers hold quite positive perceptions towards the academic poster as a multimodal genre. Further, they tended to decode the interrelation between textual and visual resources as an illustrative or code mixing relationship where both text and visuals complement each other to communicate the intended meaning. The study has pedagogical implications relevant to introducing novice multimodal writers to the available semiotic resources.
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institution American University in Cairo (Egypt)
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license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
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spelling oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-2688 Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters Fouad, Noha Ibrahim After having been marginalized for a long time as a second-class genre or “the poor country cousin of papers” (Swales & Feak, 2000), academic posters have recently received remarkable attention as a special multimodal genre that is indispensable for the membership of the academic community. In line with the currently growing interest in multimodal writing, the present study seeks to contribute to the limited body of knowledge on academic posters in two ways: first by investigating the textual and visual communicative strategies employed by novice multimodal writers to facilitate the comprehension of their multimodal texts and guide readers through their discourse and second by exploring the perceptions of those young multimodal writers towards that special genre. To accomplish the first objective, a corpus of 100 academic posters gathered from freshmen university students enrolled in a second language research writing course was compiled and analyzed textually and visually drawing mainly on the framework of D’Angelo (2016a) that distinguishes between interactive and interactional resources. To fulfill the second objective, a questionnaire was filled out by 66 students, and four interviews were carried out. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the analysis. Descriptive statistics was employed in the multimodal analysis of the posters as well as the analysis of the questionnaire responses, and a qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to interpret the responses of the interviewees. The quantitative textual and visual analysis revealed a clear dominance of the interactive resources and, to some extent, a lack of making the best use of all the available visual resources. The analysis of the self-reported data unveiled that young multimodal writers hold quite positive perceptions towards the academic poster as a multimodal genre. Further, they tended to decode the interrelation between textual and visual resources as an illustrative or code mixing relationship where both text and visuals complement each other to communicate the intended meaning. The study has pedagogical implications relevant to introducing novice multimodal writers to the available semiotic resources. 2021-05-25T07:00:00Z thesis application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1659 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/2688/viewcontent/Noha_Ibrahim_Fouad_Thesis.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain multimodality multimodal writing multimodal genre multimodal analysis academic posters second language writing genre analysis Adult and Continuing Education Educational Technology Language and Literacy Education Rhetoric and Composition
spellingShingle multimodality
multimodal writing
multimodal genre
multimodal analysis
academic posters
second language writing
genre analysis
Adult and Continuing Education
Educational Technology
Language and Literacy Education
Rhetoric and Composition
Fouad, Noha Ibrahim
Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title_full Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title_fullStr Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title_full_unstemmed Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title_short Multimodal Writing of University Students: The Case of Academic Posters
title_sort multimodal writing of university students the case of academic posters
topic multimodality
multimodal writing
multimodal genre
multimodal analysis
academic posters
second language writing
genre analysis
Adult and Continuing Education
Educational Technology
Language and Literacy Education
Rhetoric and Composition
url https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1659
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/2688/viewcontent/Noha_Ibrahim_Fouad_Thesis.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT fouadnohaibrahim multimodalwritingofuniversitystudentsthecaseofacademicposters