Areisha's Reading Response 1

In his recent work, "The New Literacy," Clive Thompson suggests that technology is "pushing our literacy into bold new directions." Thompson claims that students today have a better grasp on conforming their writing for their audience. Although he does not say so directly, Thompson apparently believes that young people today are much more skilled and malleable at writing than previous generations. He wrote an article responding to a quote from John Sutherland who blames texting and the Internet for young people's inablility to write. In the article Thompson focuses mainly on a study done by a Stanford University professor, Andrea Lundsford, and uses her findings to counter Sutherland's attack on technology.

Lundsford's study pinpoints college student's writing, both in-class and on the Web. She found that all the blogging, IM chatting, and status updating out of class made up a large portion of the student's overall writing. In fact, her study goes as far as to prove that young people today write far more than former generations, even if it is mostly in chat acroynms. Lundsford also went on to attest that no LOLs,TTYLs or other chat speak were found in any of the serious college writing she studied.

Using this information Thompson continues to dispute Sutherland's pessimistic view on technology, declaring that the modern world of online writing is reminiscent to the ancient Greek traditions of argument. He also went on to talk about how writing for an audience instead of a teacher seems to produce a better quality of writing. Thompson states, "The students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor. It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade."

I'm of two minds on Thompson and Lundsford's opinion. On the one hand, I agree that texting, blogging and chatting are not going to ruin a student's ability to compose meaningful, intelligent pieces of literature. How can constant written chatter make we, the young people, illiterate? Are we not continuously streaming our thoughts and opinions out into cyber space for other young people to read and respond to? Isn't technology making us more creative? Are we not able to present our ideas and theories in more imaginative, unique ways?

On the other hand, I'm not a huge texter or blogger. I have a Myspace where every once in a while I'll leave a "Hi," or "How's it goin?" on somebody's profile, but other than that I don't do much "chatting" on the Web. I had never even really understood what a blog is until my English 100 class. So far though, all the writing I've come across on the blog seems to be thoughtful and well written. I myself have been taking a generous amount of time to write each blog I post so as to make sure that what I'm writing is informative enough for whatever audience that may come across it.

I would like to close with the quote Thompson used to end his article. "We think of writing as either good or bad. What today's young people know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all."