Clive Thompson Summary

In the recent work of Clive Thompson, writer of “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”, he brings out two different people with opposing statements on the way technology of present days has effected the writing of students and people. Thompson writes about professor John Sutherland and his belief on how kids today have lost ability of thoughtful, grammatically correct, well-crafted, and academic writing. Sutherland states that texting has drained out the language and turned it into dull, short writing. Thompson then mentions professor Andrea Lunsford who believes that the new age technology has “revived” it and is making our literacy go in a brand new direction that could be used to our advantage. Lunsford mentions that this generation writes far more than any other generation in the past because of new electronic tools that have come out. She says that even though people may be writing incorrectly with these new tools that they still have the ability to write academically when told to do so. I agree with Lunsford, I believe that this new age technology has people writing pages after pages more than people did back then. Even though texting and internet has us shortening our words and not using correct grammar and punctuation, people do write academically and still have that capability of doing so; it is taught and practiced in school therefore students and people are able to continue to write correctly. I look at it as being a type of writing, texting is a type just like bloging is and poems along with directions, or persuasive essays. There are so many different types of writing and the new technology has given us even more different forms of writing to practice. Back then years ago people did not write as much as people do now, years ago students would come home from school and never write anything else but now with the new electronic tools people write for fun. Facecbook, texting, and e-mailing are all examples of ways society has included writing as something fun to do in our own spare time. Within these new ways of writing, people have invented their own ways of expressing what they say, such as when texting they might say “U” instead of “You” or convey their emotions through smiley faces or other animations, the writing is also a lot more quick and to the point. Sutherland was stating that this type of language is at fault for making society’s literacy more incorrect than it was back years ago. Lunsford proved Sutherland’s idea wrong when she had students write an academically persuasive essay in her class. She found that not a single student used the texting language in their paper. I believe that people are smart enough to understand the difference between texting writing and academic writing. Depending on the way people text, it could help spelling and punctuation; that is what it has done for me. I find that with a built in dictionary in my phone it has helped my spelling enormously. Fast technology may be helping students in a way that makes it much more quick for people to look up words or definitions by using virtual dictionaries rather than looking them up in books. Writing is more quick and to the point, this may be helpful in the way that more writing can be done and more can be learned a lot faster than it could have back then. With this said, I believe that new aged technology has a great outcome for student literacy and writing by how it holds many types of ways to write and that it is much more easy to write whenever people please. (612)
KC Campbell