Reader-Oriented Activities.” Writing
the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of
Composition and Communication. Ed. Carol David and Anne R. Richards. Parlor Press
LLC: Lafayette, Indiana. 2008.
Print.
This article takes activity theory
as the foundation of graphic and/or visual examination. The document revision
assignment focuses on improving student documents that either do not manage to
incorporate both text and graphics or that do so ineffectively. The assignment
Pickering outlines is that students must find a public document and revise its
images and text. It may be a document that is already effective in general, but
that can be revised to address another audience more effectively. Several
things are emphasized to the students as they tackle this assignment: first,
they are encouraged to analyze readers’ needs. Cultural knowledge is thus
essential—the context of likely reading constitutes the matrix, here. From
Pickering’s perspective, students don’t need to be trained in ethnographic
research in order to understand the context of a particular readership; they
do, however, need to inquire and observe enough to understand how to
communicate effectively within that context. What I like best about this
assignment is that it offers students the freedom to experiment with pretty
invasive revisions. Since the original document is not their own and does not
represent their own personal best (even if it would only have been their best
up to that point), revision does not symbolize backtracking or failing and
restarting when it is presented as first a mental exercise (they plan/propose
revisions), second a practical exercise (they create and insert their
revisions), and only third as a personal/self-reflective practice (this step is
not even present in the assignment; presumably invasive creative ambitious
revision practices would, however, carry over to students’ own documents).
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