Hayden Benjamin Aria S.

Halliday English 106 4/21/14 Lauer, Contending with Terms Multimedia and multimodal are two very similar terms. The similarity between these terms is the reason that this paper is written, because they are often confused with one another and mistook to be the same. This says quite a bit about what we are doing in class right now, because we are working on using the multi-modal in our final project of the semester. Of course, the two words are so similar that I feel as though I did not come away with a full understanding after reading. The writing did repeat itself, but based on how it said, Communications media as they are discussed in this denition (e.g., text, sounds, images) might today be considered modes, but the latter half of the denition puts an emphasis on the nished product and the intended uses of the product, which is more characteristic of multimedia and its use in industry than multimodal and its use in the classroom. I almost would believe that what we are doing right now in class is incorporating multi-media. However, after examination of the document, I realize that multi-modal is used primarily for the class room and getting a message across. Though multi-media also is for sending a message clearly, it is more focused on the final product of what is being used. The quote, more recent denitions seem to suggest that multimedia texts are inherently multimodal texts, describes the paper best because even after the long explanation, the words are just extremely similar in meaning.