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Using visual rhetoric as a mode of instruction in two-year college composition can have a positive and powerful impact on teaching and learning.
In her article "Visual Literacy in Teaching and Learning: A Literature Perspective" Suzanne Stokes boldly claims, "Students need to learn visually and teachers need to learn to teach visually" (1). For the past several years I have taken Stokes's advice to heart and included a visual component in my two-year-college composition class because as she and the other scholars I reference throughout the article agree, it is the logical place to present this facet of rhetorical education. And while I have encountered a few challenges along the way, my combining the verbal and visual modes has been for me as extremely satisfying as digging and planting in my garden on a warm summer day and for my students as startling as their hearing the sound of a thunder clap out of the blue. Are they master critics and analysts of visual messages by the time they leave my classes? Not quite. However, their exposure to visual rhetoric certainly makes them more aware of visuals as an important mode of communication, and many of them tell me on their evaluations at the end of the semester that they definitely recognize the similarities between reading a visual and reading a written text. Quite frankly, for them and for me, seeing images dancing across a screen and talking about them is just a lot of fun.
My purpose, therefore, in this article is to discuss how I became involved with visual rhetoric, how it has evolved in my writing classes since its inauguration, how it has had an impact on my writing students, and how it has changed my way of thinking about teaching and learner success.
The Seed Is Planted
In 2009, a colleague of mine with whom I had collaborated on other writing projects asked me if I would be interested like her in using a visual rhetoric component in my composition class and somehow linking our sections. I stumbled around for an answer that would sound better than just "No," and finally replied, "I've had no formal training in visual rhetoric, and I don't know how I could make room for...