Reading Response 1

In his recent work, Clive Thompson responds to pundits everywhere who suggest young people today don’t know how to write. In the article, Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, he disagrees with those who make these claims. And I agree with Thompson.
In Thompson’s article he brings up the argument that kids today do much more “life writing” than the generations before. From personal experience, I can say that this is true. Communication between friends and me is often through Facebook, text, and online chat. Whereas the communication between my parents and their friends is either though phone or the occasional email. That is if they can finish the letter before becoming frustrated and quitting because they’re tired of typing letter by letter with their index finger. Nearly all of my friends now have cell phones with keyboards and spend far more time using unlimited texting than their minutes.
Thompson refers to a study done by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. Lunsford collected 14,672 student writing samples between 2001 to 2006. These samples included everything from class assignments, essays, journal entries, emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. She found that 38 percent of the writings took place out of the classroom, which she calls “life writings”. I myself can say that a decent chunk of my writing is also done outside of the classroom.
Some may say that the “life writing” kids do through text and online chat, using abbreviations and leaving out punctuation, is corrupting their academic writing. Thompson addresses this in his article by referring to referring a study done by Lunsford which examined the work of her first-year students and didn’t find an example of texting speak in a single academic paper.
In his last two paragraphs of Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, Thompson explains how young people benefit from life writing. “The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision,” Thompson points out. Then he goes on to say “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.” I strongly agree with this detail of the article. Isn’t the whole point of writing to communicate a point to an audience? Whether that may be through a formal essay that summarizes a novelist’s purpose to an English professor or a text message to your “bff” that says, “ur my bff4l c u tnt @ the party!” Each audience is receiving a message that has purpose to them and context from the author. Although that text message may not be formal or academic, the young person has communicated to their audience in a successful manner. Furthermore, that same author is able to compose an academic paper which also has context and communicated to an audience in a successful manner.
I see eye to eye with Thompson when he claims that knowing who the audience is and why you’re writing to them may be the most crucial factor of writing. I believe that factor is well practiced by young writers today, through both academic and life writings.