Book Review - Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication by Carol David and Anne R. Richards

Excerpt

David and Richards' collection of essays, Writing the Visual , is practical in nature, providing writing and communication instructors with plenty of examples of classroom practices and assignments that can teach students about visual rhetoric. In defining the purpose and value of teaching visual rhetoric in relationship to written texts, the editors claim that "Teachers of English who make the visual a salient theme may find that students who recognize how an image can persuade may be better able to articulate what constitutes written persuasion or even argument; these students likely will grasp, at the very least, that the distance between visual and written cultures is less vast than they had imagined" (p. 5). Thus, David and Richards' conclude that understanding the relationship between visual and written texts, and the subsequent usefulness of this knowledge, is essential and can be handled by pedagogues when careful attention is given to visuals in the context of a classroom.