What is multimodality?
Multimodal texts are texts that have more than one mode. Those texts may incorporate spoken or written language, still or moving images. Multimodal texts can be produced on paper or electronic screen and also incorporate visual and audio (Walsh, 2006).
Besides, Walsh (2006) also mentioned that in order to create an effective multimodal text, affordance is indeed an important element. Affordance is the ability to 'show' and 'tell' at the same time which means in a multimodal text, it must be able to give an insight to the readers through showing images, visual, sounds and tell the readers about what is going on through texts.
Living in 21st century, do we still have the need to fly to another country to visit somebody or to see a special site? The answer is NO, definitely. We now live in a Global Village where everyone is able to connect with each other from all over the world without having to go to a country by airplane. Computer has become one of the necessity in every household in this world. However, now, not just having computer at home, but as well as tablet computer.
For those who still does not know what a tablet computer is, I guess you are living somewhere else. I am just joking. I'll roughly explain what tablet computer is. A tablet computer is actually a moblie computer, larger than a mobile phone where you can bring it everywhere.Tablet computer is like a computer device where it has been integrated into a flat touch screen device (Wikipedia.org, n.d.).
The most often seen tablet computer now is iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Source: Google
Source: Google
Taking iPad as an example, Apple products have become a sensation among the people lately. Almost everyone owns an Apple product from iPhone to MacBook. It contains a lot of different functions and features. Using tablets, we can go online, watch movies, reading e-books, check mails, play games. We live in a world where all of are naturally attracted to visuals and audio.
Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) mentioned about the layout of books can be applied to electronic mediums in order to convey a message more effectively. Hence, in order to attract readers' attention, the layout of iPad has to be colorful whereby images and text are contrast so that readers' will not be confused when looking or reading from iPad.
References List:
Kress, G, van Leeuwen, T 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Ch. 7, pp. 186-219, UNISA library readings.
Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift':Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of language and literacy Vol 29- 1, UNISA library readings.
Wikipedia.org n.d., Tablet Computer, viewed 17 November 2011, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_computer>.
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