In Clive Thompson’s recent work, “The New Literacy”, he suggest this new generation of students are much more advanced than the previous. Thompson claims that texting, blogging, twittering and updating facebooks do not negatively effect students ability to write. Thompson uses Andrea Lunsford for an example to prove his point. Lunsford makes a bold statement saying, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” The reasoning for Lunsford’s statement was her mammoth project also known as the “Stanford Study of Writing”. In this study she collected essays, emails, blogs, chatting sessions and much more. This study made her realize how much writing takes place outside of the classroom. Lunsford goes to say technology is not lessening students writing, it is only making it better. The Stanford students seemed not to be as enthusiastic about writing in class because there was no audience. There was no purpose for the essays besides a grade. Thompson ends his argument by saying, “…knowing who you’re writing for and why your writing might be the most crucial factor of all.” Students only ask for the purpose of why they are writing something.
I never thought about how much I actually write until I read “The New Literacy”. In my opinion I also believe students writing is improving the more twitter updates, blogging and texting they do. Unlike writing the traditional five paragraph essay, this gives students a chance to communicate without a template. When students blog or text they do not have to worry about a thesis statement or topic sentences. The only thing that concerns them is how their audience is going to react and the reason for them to start writing in the first place. Usually as human beings we start writing because something set us off. We disagree and then want to put our own opinion out there as well. I know that I ask questions like, why are we writing these essays? What is the purpose? I have come to realize there is really no purpose for writing a five paragraph essay. Yes, it is always good for persuading essays and timed writes. Although the majority of writing is not that. In the real world we write to people about how we feel in letters and so on. Some would argue that students now, could not hold a long conversation due to all of the texting. Being a teenager I would obviously disagree. Majority of the texting we do are intense conversations that need a lot of thought put into them. “Your audience”, that is the other person, has to understand what your saying. What I mean by that is, sarcasm which is a huge factor when you can’t hear the other persons tone of voice. Plus if you think about how much we text, what are all the things we talk about? Aren’t we going to run out of things to say? No, because we are saying them in a creative new way each time. The traditional five paragraph essay takes away our creativity. Blogging, twittering and facebook updates are where our creativity appears. Using these outside of school is only going to improve our writing in class tremendously.
-Alex
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In Alex's summary of "The New Literacy" she voices that being a teenager the short conversations in texting are false and that there is meaning to what we discuss. That a large portion of what we do talk about is intense and we need to think about what we say and adjust how we express it in order to get a decent response from our audience. I agree with this, I have important discussions with my friends using text or instant messaging way more then I would talking on the phone. I think that this form of communication does improve our writing because we get to experiment with new styles without having to stress about good form. Then as Alex pointed out this streak of creativity is brought into our assignments and as a result we strengthen our writing overall.
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