Response#1

4/13/10

The article ‘Clive Thompson on the New Literacy’, stated by Clive Thompson himself, presents two outlooks on the ongoing argument of whether new age technology has decreased our ability to write formal, sufficient essay papers, or instead, has it began a new revolutionary role towards literacy. English professor, John Sutherland of University of London, insist technology is the one to blame for the lack of crafted essay and high qualified papers, which he observes in college students. He claims websites such as Facebook, and constant texting “has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, and sad shorthand.” Although Professor Sutherland may reject the idea of technology being a beneficial factor to society, many people argue the complete opposite. Andrea Lundsford, who is a writing and rhetoric professor at Stanford University, emphasizes the importance of the new literacy revolution.”I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” She adds technology is not butchering our ability to write but reviving it! While organizing a major project called the Stanford Study of Writing from 2001-2006, Professor Lunsford observed 14,672 students everyday writing assignments samples, formal essays, emails, even their journal entries, and chat sessions. From the information she collected, she found evident verification that the new generation has written far beyond than any other generation, thanks to the innovation of the Internet. Clive Thompson states, “It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t school assignments.” Now, nearly 38 percent of an average students writing are out of school, which can also be seen as ‘life writing’. Due to the constant and repetitive online chatting and writing, young people are more aware of what audience they are writing for. Lunsford’s research has pointed out that this repetitive writing has many immense uses. When examining papers of her first year students, she noticed there was not one example of ‘text speaking’ in their academic papers. This simply implies, new technology is not reducing our ability to write, but instead it’s helping us gain insight and understanding of who our audience are.

I completely agree on what Professor Lunsford’s investigation has informed me. Although, I believe the article would have been more rounded off if both sides of the story were distributed equally .I may have had a difference in opinion if Professor John Sutherland had not only state claims, but also have had an intensive investigation, proving chats and Tweet updates, are stunting our growth in the right direction towards sufficient academic writing. Overall, technology is in fact helping us move further in the right direction towards academic writing . I also believe that this literacy revolution is only the beginning, and well only progress through time.