Visual compositions and texts

When I read the chapter discussing visual texts and how to analyze them, I felt oddly familiar and comfortable with the idea of analyzing these types of texts. But I also recall a childhood and young adult life of reading graphic novels, popular magazines, and other texts that included pictures.

I know that Jenna has a similar experience of high school journalism and experience with page layouts and visual text composition. I enjoyed the layout process more than the writing process in high school journalism and that interest took me towards graphic design.

But even with this experience, these were outside of English classrooms and composition classrooms. I did have one literature class in community college that included a graphic novel in the syllabus, and I do recall analyzing the visual aspects and graphic in part of our understanding the text. I remember the students feeling more engaged and more encouraged to participate in the classroom discussion.

This one example does not repeat itself in any of my other courses in my undergraduate studies. The only other exception would be watching clips of film adaptations of books/texts we've read. But the visual and text are kept separate in these situations.

The activities given at the end of the chapter are interesting. The one about the poster boards feels a little outdated. While this may be good for a school where computers are not readily available for students, a school that has computers will have students who would rather familiarize themselves with creating visual texts digitally rather than on a poster board.

I like the idea of the visual essay, but I would change the content of the essay. I think students might enjoy creating visual essays about their favorite characters (from books, movies, or TV) or maybe about a career they are interested in pursuing. I feel like the visual essay could be applied to many different topics.

All of the activities seem to be really effective and fun assignments. I think that it would be interesting to give the students option to see which they would like to construct. Maybe, a teacher of composition would bring examples of each and then assign a student to pick one and create their visual argument, essay, exhibit, etc...