Kerrie's Take on New Literacy

In the article, Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, Thompson argues two sides of how technology is affecting literacy. He first brings in an opinion from John Sutherland, English Professor from University College of London, who says that Facebook “encourages narcissistic blabbering.” Sutherland calls texting “bleak, bald and sad shorthand.” He feels that when we text we are not using correct grammar and punctuation, therefore we are losing our ability to write correctly ending up in illiteracy.

Thompson then introduces Andrea Lunsford, Professor of Writing at Stanford University. Lunsford conducted a study of 14,672 writing samples from college students. She collected writing samples such as in class assignments, blog posts, emails, formal essays and journal entries. Her conclusions were that literacy is not killing our ability to write but instead reviving it.

Lunsford’s study showed that students and young people write more today than any generation before them. She said that she did not find that any students used “texting speak” in any academic writing. Another outcome was that students are more enthusiastic about writing when they are writing something that they are interested in or are writing to an audience. When using Facebook, Twitter, emailing and texting, they are writing to an audience. In conclusion, Lunsford’s study turned up opposite results of what Sutherland had complained about.

Good grammar is important. If you are updating Facebook or Twitter and your spelling and/or punctuation is bad, you may not be coming across “intelligent” or “educated.” Using shorthand on emails in the workplace may also not make the point you are trying to make. The audience you are writing to can usually determine the tone of your writing. After an in class experiment where we were to write to 4 different audiences, the conclusion showed that we adapt our grammar and tone to who our audience is. The writing to our professor was rather academically written. The letter to our good friend was fun and not so “stuffy.” The free writing also changed in tone, depending on what we chose as our audience. The text message was very shorthand and left out a lot of detail due to the space and format of texting.

Everything is changing in our world technically. People all over the world today use many gadgets to be able to keep up with daily life. Of course we are also going to evolve in our academics. Whether we feel that the “old school” way of writing, using correct grammar and punctuation was the best way, or if we feel that today we are writing more than before, the main thing is that we are evolving and we need to keep up with what works for us. Youth today are much more computer savvy and do communicate with their friends online, in a chat screen which means they do write more. Less people use their phones for talking; it’s mostly texting going on today. That’s just technology and the evolution of it.