Analyze a multimodal text to demonstrate your critical reading - Reading and writing about multimodal texts - Academic Reading and Writing

Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Analyze a multimodal text to demonstrate your critical reading
Reading and writing about multimodal texts
Academic Reading and Writing

When you analyze a multimodal text, you explain to readers your reading of the text — what it means and why it matters. Analysis begins with asking questions about how the text conveys its main idea or message.

GUIDELINES FOR ANALYZING A MULTIMODAL TEXT

✵ What is your first impression of the text? What details in the text create this response?

✵ When and why was the text created? Where did the text appear?

✵ What clues suggest the text’s intended audience? What assumptions are being made about the audience?

✵ What is the thesis, central idea, or message of the text?

✵ Does this text tell a story? How would you sum up the story?

✵ What modes are used, and why? How do the modes work together?

✵ How does the arrangement of sounds or design details help convey the text’s meaning or serve its purpose?

Drafting an analytical thesis statement

An effective thesis statement responds to a question about the text or tries to resolve a problem in the text. Remember that your thesis isn’t the same as the text’s thesis or main idea. Your thesis presents your judgment of the multimodal text’s message or argument. The following draft thesis summarizes the advertisement shown in 5a; it doesn’t present an analysis.

DRAFT THESIS STATEMENT (RESTATES MESSAGE OF TEXT)

Consumers who purchase coffee from farmers in the Equal Exchange network are helping farmers stay on their land.

Student writer Ren Yoshida revised his thesis statement by questioning a single detail.

WRITER’S QUESTIONS

The ad promises an equal exchange, but is the exchange equal between consumers and farmers? Do the words equal exchange and empowering farmers appeal to consumers’ emotions?

REVISED THESIS STATEMENT (PRESENTS WRITER’S JUDGMENT OF TEXT)

Although the ad works successfully on an emotional level, it is less successful on a logical level because of its promise for an equal exchange between consumers and farmers.