Reading Response #1

Chandra Thompson
English 100F
Reading Response #1

In his recent work “Clive Thompson On New Literacy”, Thompson suggests that technology is not affecting writing at all; in fact he suggests that there is actually more writing going on outside of the classroom now, than there has been in the last 50 years. Thompson used University College of London’s English professor, John Sutherland as an example of one of the many people who believes that technology is affecting children’s writing today. Andrea Lunsford supports the fact that technology is not affecting writing of the youth today and believes that it has possibly revived it. Lunsford organized a project called “Stanford Study of Writing.” In this study, she collected “14,672 writing samples from students, anything from blogs, essays, and journal entries.” Thompson uses the phrase “paradigm shift” to show just how much of a change to society he believes this to be. Technology makes it easier to send and respond emails or manage a blog; in turn it makes it more like the Greek tradition in the sense that there can be a conversation between people without having to wait for a letter to come in the mail. Thompson believes that Lunsford’s study found most students knew who their audience was and would change their tone to accommodate their audience.

Most students today are writing for an audience almost all the time, while many people in earlier generations did not. Since students are writing more for an audience, they get a different feel as to what is considered to be good writing. Students are less enthusiastic about class writing then just being able to write, because in class writing they are only writing to the professor, where as writing outside of class where they can write to anyone.

In my opinion, I believe that technology has enhanced writing for many young students. Technology has been a big part of my writing since I was in middle school, in my own experience. I do believe that as we use technology more such as texting or Myspace and Facebook, we begin to take advantage of the spell check and not spelling words right, using correct grammar, or constructing full sentences. Now I can’t say that I always construct full sentences or even spell words right when I use these types of technology, but I feel like we, as students, know when it is appropriate and when not to do this. Some might say that students cannot write when they do this, but I don’t believe that is true. I feel as the students are writing the way they do at times to accommodate to their audience. In class assignments would be different from blogs, texts, or journal entries and students realize this.

Writing is being much more important even in careers. More companies are using technology to seek potential employees and as more go “green”, they want to find ways to save paper such as email. I believe that with technology and what we have learned in school previously, as students in middle school and high school that we could be become far better writers because we realize more who are audience is going to be and have fun writing since we don’t feel like it’s just for a professor anymore.