Analysis of the New Literacy

Common sense and pundits today seem to believe that technology is to blame for poor writing skills. Has Facebook chatting, texting, and twittering cause students to be unable to compose well written essays? These issues were brought up in Clive Thompson’s article on the “New Literacy” from Wire Magazine dated August 24, 2009.
Clive Thompson reports that Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, conducted a study called the Stanford Study of Writing. In her research, from 2001 through 2006, she collected several forms of writing from a variety of students. She found that students were writing more than any generation before them. They are accomplishing this by using today’s technology as it is a significant part of daily communication. Lunsford discovered that even with the new forms of communication they were still able to write properly in their academic papers. Today’s online writing tends to be more conversational. One of her conclusions is stated in the following quote: “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”. Lunsford also concluded that technology today is not killing the ability to write but transforming it and taking it in a new direction.
Before today’s technology, students did little to no writing outside of the classroom unless it was required for their jobs. Clive Thompson believes that these new forms of communication like Facebook chatting, texting, and twittering are giving students more opportunities to write, and teaching them to be concise. Students today often write directly for a specific audience with a goal of persuasion. Thompson also believes it is still very important to learn good writing techniques but knowing who and why you are writing plays the most important role. He implies that these new types of writing enhance a student’s ability to write persuasively.
I’ve always believed that in order to write well one must be taught the fundamentals of written communication. I hadn’t considered that conversational writing through Facebook chatting, blogging, emailing, instant messaging and texting could enhance your writing skills. After reading this article and considering the matter, I now understand how technology and these new forms of communication are helpful in building our writing skills.
This is an interesting topic to discuss because writing is a critical and frequently used skill in society today. It affects nearly everyone today since new forms of communication are giving more people the opportunity to write regularly. Therefore everyone should be concerned with this topic as technology has really opened new avenues of communication across industries and across the globe.
In conclusion, technology has actually made a positive impact on writing in a variety of ways. Technology has presented new forms of communication with new styles of writing. As Clive Thompson points out, students can write today and technology has not hindered but rather enabled them in the area of written communications. Technology is not the cause of the problem but the foundation of a new paradigm of communication. Whether the measure is the amount, level, or impact of writing, today’s students can write.