Hey guys!
While our class was discussing our recent writing assignment Mr.Laz mentioned one of the purposes for writing it was for research. From what i recall, it was being done by a professor at Rowan and was focused on students attitudes towards writing. This got me thinking about students(including myself) in our school that moan and groan everytime a writing assignment is assigned. So I went online to investigate a little and try to find out some information for myself. Obviously I didn't find any statistics about the number of students that hate writing, but i did find some interesting stuff.
I found an article online called "Instant Messaging: Friend or Foe of Student Writing?" that explored the effects of instant messaging and texting on students writing. The aticle itself had pro and con arguments, but there were a few that caught my attention:
PRO- "Instant messaging and e-mail are creating a new generation of teenage writers, accustomed to translating their every thought and feeling into words. They write more than any generation has since the days when telephone calls were rare and the mailman rounded more than once a day" (Helderman, 2003).
CON-"This was also a problem for Carl Sharp, whose 15-year old son's summer job application read 'i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids"' (Friess, 2003)
I agree with the author when she mentions that students need to learn to when to use the appropraite language. It would pretty awkward if i walked into a college interview and said, "Yo whatup bro." I would probably get an "X" through my name very quickly. I would have to say I think that instant messaging and texting gets students writing more and and gets their ideas out of there head and onto paper much easier, BUT while it maybe be easier to get out their ideas they need to know how to refine and edit those ideas into appropraite language for professional settings.
Just a Thought.
-Jordan Levy
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good job finding all of that information Jordan, and I was thinking the same thing during our short class "discussion" about this study, and the researchable effects of text messaging in particular; personally, I feel like I keep my text language and my literary language quite seperate with relatively little effort trying to write complete sentances and such but I have heard similar stories from previous english teachers who call to the students' attention their accidental use of text and IM language
-Chris Balch
I agree that I can USUALLY keep my texting and literary writings separate. However, I have found that I have to do a quick Once-over on my english writings just to be sure that nothing is abbreviated or that my "I's" are all in upper case. I have caught myself many times using the lowercase "I". Although, I have yet to figure out if it's because of my texting habbits or because of my haste to finish a paper.
Mike Rudolph
Post a Comment