Today’s generation’s methods of reading, writing, and communicating are changing dramatically because of novel information and communication technologies, ICTs. With the evolution of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, text messaging, instant messaging, e-mails, blogs, and other websites and technologies, youth are communicating in a significantly different way than past generations. Sheelah M. Sweeny (2010) states in her article Writing for the Instant Messaging and Text Messaging Generation: Using New Literacies to Support Writing Instruction that, “Teachers may be concerned about the way some students write using these different ICTs, imagining the potential negative impact their students’ academic writing, but this interest can be an instructional advantage” (p. 121). The basis of Writing for the Instant Messaging and Text Messaging Generation: Using New Literacies to Support Writing Instruction is to provide teachers with a definition of new literacies and a rationale to introduce and use new literacies and ICTs in their classrooms.
The new-wave literacy is a much broader category than previously taught. Reading and writing were once separate subjects; now, literacy instruction consists of reading and writing, as well as listening, speaking, and viewing. Today, students are learning to convey their thoughts and meanings through not just written work, but also through music, images, audio, and video. Sweeny states that, “New literacies can transform students’ writing into unique expressions of their ideas, thoughts, critiques, and responses to literature and other curricular subjects” (p. 127). Teachers are needing to teach students how to transfer their thoughts and writing to an ICT format, as well as provide stud...
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...acies to Support Writing Instruction is a guide for teachers to incorporate new literacies into their classrooms. It outlined the differences between previous and new literacies while providing numerous online resources and teaching ideas. I believe that technology cannot replace all aspects of the classroom, and that traditional writing assignments are still needed. However, as a teacher, I know that the new technology and literacies can improve my students learning and better prepare them for after schooling. Therefore, I will incorporate both traditional and new literacies into my classroom.
Works Cited
Sweeny, S. M. (2010). Writing for the instant messaging and text messaging generation: using new
literacies to support writing instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(2), 121-130.
Retrieved February 2, 2012, from the Wilson Web database.
In the article, “Does Texting Affect Writing?”, the author Michaela Cullington conveys her speculation that texting does not correlate to how students write formal essays. At the beginning of the article Cullington introduces the term texting and the convenience texting brings. Later expressing her concern that the texting language “Textspeak” is actually affecting students writing; then contradicts these views by using primary and secondary sources (news articles, books, her own surveys and research). In addition, she uses an anecdote to tell of her own experience with texting and writing. Together with other evidences and research put together, she uncovers the debate between textspeak and formal writing. On the basis of her research, she concludes that the state of texting does not interfere with writing or writing abilities.
Michaela Cullington, a student, wrote a paper “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in 2010 for an English class. The paper is an examination of texting and the belief that it negative effective student’s writing. Cullington goes into detail about textspeak- “language created by these abbreviations”- and their use in formal writings. She organizes the paper in a way that is confusing to understand at first (pg. 1). At the end of the paper, she discusses her finding in her own research which comes to show that texting does not affect writing. But this is contradicting to the information she received from the teachers. The students and the teachers were seeing differences in the use of textspeak in formal writing. Cullington has good support for her
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, it is reported, "25% of high school seniors are proficient writers" (Cullington, 362). Jacquie Ream, a former teacher and author for K.I.S.S. expands on this statistic by stating, "we have a whole generation being raised without communication" (Cullington, 362). By this, Ream means that we as people are not physically socializing with each other, but yet using devices to replace the way we talk and express our feelings to one another instead. Ream then goes on to blame the use of acronyms and shorthand in text messages as the downfall of writing skills. Here, Ream means that because of lack of proper language we have become careless when writing. Naomi Baron, a professor at American University, states that America as a whole has become sloppy with the mechanics of writing due to texting. Both teachers in Michaela's article agree that the essence of texting is responsible for the oversight of punctuation, lack of emotion, and lastly a rise in grammatical errors in formal
Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen, eds. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. NewYork: Longman, 2000.
In our world there are many forms of communication and these devices are beginning to take a toll on our younger generations. In Jeffery Kluger’s article,” We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging,” the idea that younger generations are becoming socially inept due to technology is discussed. As these younger generations consume texting as a main form of communication other important social skills deteriate.
In the article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy,” writer Clive Thompson argues that the widespread use of technology and social media does not make kids illiterate and unable to form coherent sentences, but instead, keeps them actively writing and learning. Thompson’s article is based off of a study done by Andrea Lunsford, a writing professor at Stanford University. Thompson agrees with Lunsford that the use of social media and the Internet allow students to be creative and get better at writing. In his article, Thompson quotes John Sutherland, an English professor at University College of London, to inform the audience of the opposite side of the argument. He states, “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp. 371-377, 2008.
In 1999, people could start sending text messages to other people. With different networks to their own, life became easier because of text messaging users. Soon later, English language became known as ‘text speak’, a way we write now by abbreviating long and big words. This is causing teens to lose the ability to learn how to spell and read. Now that text messaging allows kids to abbreviate, kids are now failing school classes by abbreviating in their school work (Cooke).
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
Through the decades, languages have been altered, becoming more understandable to new generations. But this new written language that has arisen, is only comprehensible to those who “have a good understanding of syntax and grammar already” (Spires, 124). As explained by Dallas Spires, text messaging “uses different grammatical standards and many abbreviations…spelling is ignored…and verbs are not conjugated” (124). This form of media is used within an exclusive audience-mostly teens and young adults to communicate their thoughts and ideas with ease. Many people fear that this new form of written English replaces current modern English. If the mistreat of written English continues, a new form of incoherent and unconstrained language will be created for upcoming generations. The new media is making society commit these grammatical errors in the English language to simplify ideas. Using improper grammar through new media is becoming a crummy habit that will pass on from generation to generation if is not regulated or put to an
Writing is a form of communication that has changed over the years, whether that is the way it is used or the meaning it has for some people. In the generation that I grew up in, writing has been around in many different ways, such as texting or instant messaging friends. I remember using Facebook at an early age and communicating with my friends and family through a different form of writing. Compared to my elders, the way they were taught and the way they used their writing has changed immensely. Since I grew up in a newer generation than them, my writing experience has been partially different in a good way. My literacy narrative will reflect that difference.
Exposure to these devices provides students with a broad knowledge of literary style and technique, while serving to develop and improve writing skills. Also, because much of the modern literary ideas and writings allude to and can be traced...
Looking back over the course of the semester, I feel that I learned many new and interesting uses for technology within the classroom – both for classrooms that have a lot of technology and for classrooms that are limited with technology. For the majority of the class, we utilized William Kists’ book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age (2010), which provided multiple modes of instruction that both utilized and/or created technology. One of the first things that I remember, and consequently that stuck with me through the course’s entirety, is that individuals must treat everything as a text. Even a garden is a text. The statement made me change the way that I traditionally viewed Language Arts both as a student and as a teacher, as I very narrowly saw literature and works of the like as texts only; however, by considering nearly anything as a text, one can analyze, study, and even expand his/her knowledge. Kist (2010) states that society is “experiencing a vast transformation of the way we “read” and “write,” and a broadening of the way we conceptualize “literacy” (p. 2). In order to begin to experience and learn with the modern classroom and technologically advanced students, individuals must begin to see new things as literature and analyze those things in a similar manner.
Clive Thompson asserts in his essay, The New Literacy, that people today are writing more than ever as they socialize online. Nowadays, almost everybody uses social media, but it is more popular amongst younger people. Teenagers text and tweet every little thought that pops up in their head. However, numerous scholars can argue that texting and tweeting defiles the serious academic writing with slang and “text speak.” By way of contrast, Thompson claims that using shortened language and smileys online does not degrade a person’s abilities to write well in an academic paper. Furthermore, composing texts and tweets online can help an individual with their writing. By communicating online, we are able to learn grammar and writing through our own
The use inventive spelling, abbreviations. As high school students start to use short texting, some of their grades dropped due to the spelling errors they make. So many teens get used to wing abbreviating that they just begin to write that that way. Some teenagers writing skills have turned into sentence fragments, because of the limited space they put into text sentence. In my research how does texting affect teen literacy the percentage was 64 percent of students who say they incorporated text language in their writing, 25 percent said they did so to convey have used text shortcuts a lot of students, vocabulary and grammar is also affecting their literacy. The outlook of the teachers is that. Text plus recently released results of its own survey of 1,214 teens that use their services. 43 percent of which have texted in class, they seem to pay more attention to their phone than what the teacher is teaching. They seem to have the phones that will spell the word for them so they have to worry about spelling. In the age of text message, where words are reduce to no stand abbreviating, symbols, But in my research I pointed out that technology has put new emphasis on reading and