Promoting Onomastics in Travel Writing: Multimodal Travel Toponymies

ANS 2025, February 22, 2025 Promoting Onomastics in Travel Writing: Multimodal Travel Toponymies by Kenneth Price (Texas A&M University, TX, USA) Academic curricular development is predicated upon a methodology whereby learning goals and educational outcomes are outlined, so bodies like to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation can ensure that the curriculum of colleges and universities meets these goals and outcomes. Key to curricular assessment is the construction of learning outcomes. Learning outcomes describe the measurable skills, abilities, knowledge, or values that students should be able to demonstrate as a result of completing a course. One central SLO (Student Learning Outcome) of travel writing courses is research and scholarship. Incorporating toponymies into the genre of travel writing perfectly realizes this SLO, yet there has not been any formal or informal pedagogical research or instruction of onomastics in this field. As a result, travel writing instructors have not recognized the opportunity to incorporate this interesting and versatile field of study into their travel writing curriculum. Travel toponym assignments and activities that have students research a geographic location, such as a town, region, or country achieves this. This presentation discusses the potential for promoting onomastics in travel writing. It details the methodology and justification for integrating onomastics into the curriculum of travel writing courses, includes assignments and activities that promote onomastics in travel writing pedagogy and practice, and details how to construct learning outcome statements and to develop measurable assessment strategies for institutions to gauge the effectiveness of these assignments. Biography: Kenneth R. Price is an Associate Professor of Scientific and Technical Communication in the Department of Language and Literature at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. His research focuses primarily on multimodal communication in scientific, technical, and travel writing. He recently completed Multimodal Travel Writing (2024), a follow-up to Professional Writing within the Disciplines (2022) and Technical Writing (2018).