Over the last quarter I’ve been contributing to this blog twice a week, either writing about something that’s going on in my life, or blogging about a prompt that I got in my english class. In addition to this blog, we’ve had many writing assignments that have all contributed towards a big research paper that I finished last week. While these papers are very different from my blog posts, both stylistically and content-wise, they have many similarities. They’ve also built on each other and have made each assignment a little easier as well.
Multimodal/Blogging
As I wrote in a very recent post discussing the way that multimodal education has developed recently, blogging is a major part of multimodal writing. Throughout the whole blogging process I’ve learned and developed many different strategies that have allowed me to keep my reader engaged and incorporate different forms of media.
My favorite form of media that I’ve incorporated into my blog posts have been gif’s or short videos. I think they’re a perfect way to give the reader a break and hopefully by doing so they feel refreshed and then are able to continue reading my material. Additionally, a good way I have given my readers a break is through the use of white space. By keeping my writing to a minimal amount in each paragraph, there is less strain on the reader’s eye which keeps them interested and engaged.
Academic Writing
It’s incredibly important to keep your reader engaged in academic writing too. However, after blogging I’ve come to realize how difficult this can be. As opposed to blogs, where I can use extra indents or gifs to keep my reader’s attention, in academic writing I can’t use those strategies. Instead, I’ve developed other methods that work pretty well. Whether it’s starting off with an anecdote that hooks the reader in or writing about a relatively unique topic, there are many rhetorical strategies that can keep reader’s attention just as well, if not better, than blogs can.
Finally, I’ve been able to use my blog as a space in which I could “test out” my ideas with very little repercussions. I’ve been able to sit down and write in a informal style which makes it easy for me to test out different writing styles that I hadn’t used before. After getting them down on paper, I was able to see what was good about them and what needed improvement before I used the strategies in academic writing that “matters.”
Looking forward, I plan to either continue this blog or start up a new one in which I can continue to develop my writing and multimodal abilities.