"The New Literacy"

Clive Thompson’s article “The New Literacy” is written about the effects that technology has on college student’s academic writing. Thompson’s claim is that college students are at an age of illiteracy and technology is to blame. What Thompson is saying, is that the use of technology is taking away from the performance and knowledge of how to write well academically. One implication of Thompson’s treatment of how much college students spend most of their time creating some form of written communication using the World Wide Web to friends, family, or just whoever is willing to read their post is holding students back from improving their writing skills. Although Thompson does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that college students will use the short hand type of writing that is used for texting or emailing companions to write their academic papers for their professors’ writing assignments. In this article Thompson introduces Andrea Lunsford’s idea that students are very good at acknowledging the audience that will be reading their writings and are able to adapt and change their technique thus showing the student’s improved writing skill. Lunsford claims, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” In making this comment, Lunsford is saying that not only are college students not regressing in their academic writing, but they are in fact increasing their knowledge of writing and all the points that come with it, i.e. who is the audience of the writing and how the audience will affect how the paper is written. Lunsford goes further in saying that college students today have an excellent grasp of how to adjust their papers depending on the audience in which is going to be reading their writings because of all the different ways of communicating through written thoughts. Students being able to change how they write depending on if their writing for a professor or to a friend about a topic that got their hamster wheel turning are actually being in tune with the technological times. My own view is that some students have trouble writing academic papers that require them to express personal analysis of given subjects, so if writing emails, texting, tweeting, or blogging helps them to think and write about how they view certain subjects, then the use of technology is helping college students look into themselves and express openly how they interpret the happenings in the world around them. Thompson and Lunsford both bring the subject of how technology affects college students’ academic writing into light in different ways, in doing this both have achieved they same goal of having the subject analyzed by teachers and students alike. I think Thompson said it best with “Good teaching is always going to be crucial,” because it is the teachers who help the students learn how to use the world around them to improve how they express themselves. With teachers and students having the awareness of how technology can hinder or help academic writing can only bring better use of the technology that has been presented to college students and teachers to use as they deem necessary.