Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

In in the essay “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy,” Clive Thompson starts by saying how technology today, negatively effects kids and that they can’t write. Everything now a days are written short hand, straight to the point and with visual aids. Writing correctly and formally isn’t much of an issue. Technology has taken away writing from this generation. But actually, Thompson isn’t really agreeing with that fact. Andrea Lunsford, a professor at Stanford University, created a project where she analyzed different writing samples of 14,672 students over a period of five years. What she found was that, “…technology isn’t killing out ability to write. It’s reviving it…” It’s not that this generation isn’t writing much. In this day in age, the youth is writing more than any other generation. Before the internet was accessible, many people never write unless they were required to do so for a job. Other than that, the writing stopped when they got out of school. Now, the writing is being done online since most of young peoples socializing is over email or Facebook. In fact, Lunsford found out that 38% of Stanford students writing took place outside of class. Thompson states, “The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (sometimes virtually no on in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing.” They want to get their ideas and points across for others to read- know what their point of view is. “…writing is about persuading and organizing and debating…” We want their audience to see why we are right or why we think that way and why they should agree. Or at least just to argue with another person about the topic. Of course, it’s not as fun to write an essay where just the administer is reading the work and the purpose of the essay is to receive a grade. The Stanford students weren’t as thrilled to write those and same goes with most students. I know I’m not when I have to write an essay for class. Why are people blaming technology for the youths writing skills? Do you see shorthand, texting lingo in academic essays? Lunsford didn’t when she analyzed a paper by a first-year student. Sure, when texting a buddy or updating the our status, we aren’t going to write a complete sentence with correct grammar and spelling. But now the technology has grown even wider today, allowing anything to be posted, the writing might become more locked and tight when it comes to posting show recaps, walkthroughs for games and in depth, meaningful blogs. Thompson ends his essay with a strong passage, “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.” We know who we’re writing for and we know why we’re writing it. It just depends on how accurate and correct we want to be.