Reading Response 1

In Clive Thompson’s article The New Literacy he examines how the technological breakthroughs of this generation are having an effect on the writing styles and the amount of writing young people use and do. He refers to a study by Andrea Lunsford called the Stanford Study of Writing. She collected over 14000 writing samples from students, everything from formal essays to blog posts. Of the samples collected by Lunsford 38% of them took place outside the classroom. According to Lunsford, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” Lunsford also found that since the internet has existed people today are writing more than any generation before them. Lunsford’s team found that today’s writing is closer to that of Ancient Greece than the letter writing of 50 years ago because students have learned sophisticated rhetoric skills such assessing their audience and adapting to them to get their point across better. Lunsford’s study also found that students want to write something will have “an effect on the world.” They also want to write for an audience not because in class writing read only by the professor would have no purpose other than a grade. Thompson goes on to say that the internet is “pushing literacy in cool directions,” that the internet is providing a place where people can have discussions on any topic. In his conclusion Thompson states that knowing why you’re writing for and know why you’re writing may be the most important factor in a student’s writing. Over all he thinks that the internet and texting have had a positive effect on the way people, especially young people write today.

In my own personal experience I have found that the internet is a wonderful place to connect and share ideas with people from all over the world. It gives a place for the unheard masses say what they want to say, it lets someone who is afraid or nervous of speaking to large groups of people share their ideas while remaining anonymous. Small time writers can self-publish their work on the internet so it can be read by people and get enough recognition to go to print. An example of this is David Wellington and his Monster Island series which he original posted in serial for on his blog before it got picked up by a publisher.

Many people believe that the internet has led to lazy and careless writing. They refer to the shortened words, often misspellings, and grammatically incorrect posts to prove their point. The thing they miss though is that the internet has become so influential that we have developed our own shorthand languages to communicate such as, “leet-speak and lol-speak (ex. pwnd, n00b, teh).” While this is an acceptable form of writing on the internet for short posts and such it should stay separate from academic writing. Fortunately the study done by Lunsford did not find this or any texting speak in any academic papers by first year students. I find that I agree with Thompson assumption that the internet has changed out writing for the better by giving us a wider audience to write to.