Instructor's Notes

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Read Thompson's essay.

For a sample annotated passage, see A Process of Critical Reading.

Alley JulsethStudent Critical Reading Response

Analyzing “The New Literacy”

1

Being part of a generation that spends an immense amount of time online, I find it rather annoying to hear that youth today are slowly diminishing the art of writing. Because Facebook and Twitter have limited character space, I do use abbreviations such as “s.m.h.” (shaking my head), “abt” (about), and “u” (you). However, my simplistic way of writing informally for online media has no correlation with my formal writing. In “The New Literacy” essay, Clive Thompson indicates that this lack of correlation seems to be the case with many more students.

2

Thompson explores the idea that the advancing media is changing the way students write. After citing Professor Sutherland blaming technology for “bleak, bald, sad shorthand” (qtd. in Thompson 547), he goes on to describe the Stanford Study of Writing, conducted by writing professor Andrea Lunsford. She studied over 14,000 examples of student writing from academic essays to e-mails and chats. From these samples, she learned that “young people today write far more than any generation before them” (547). I completely agree with this point based on the large volume I write socializing on the Internet. I believe that the time I spend online writing one-dimensional phrases does not weaken my formal writing as a student.

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3

Thompson goes on to explain that the new way of writing on the Internet is actually more similar to the Greek tradition of argument than to the essay and letter-writing tradition of the last half century. Lunsford concluded that “the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to get their point across” (547). Their Internet writing is like a conversation with another person.

4

I find this conclusion interesting. As I advance in my writing as a student, I remember being taught as a child that there is a distinct line between writing an essay that is due to a teacher and writing a letter to a friend. Although the two are different, there are similarities as well. The nice thing about writing on the Internet is that I can choose what I write about and how I say it. When I’m writing to a friend, sticking to the point isn’t exactly the goal, but I do get my main point across. However, I never write a formal essay unless it is assigned. Like the Stanford students, I do not look forward to writing an essay simply for the grade. Writing for a prompt I did not choose does not allow me to put my full-hearted passion into the essay. When I was younger, I wrote essays that were more bland and straight to the point. As I write now, I try to think as though I am reading to a room full of people, keeping my essay as interesting as I can.

5

Thompson ends his piece on the importance of good teaching. This importance is true; teaching is the way students learn how to draw that line between formal and informal writing and how to write depending on audience. I appreciate and completely agree with Thompson’s essay. I feel that he describes the younger generation very well. He is pushing away what high-brow critics say, and he is saying we are almost inventing a new way of writing.

Work Cited

Thompson, Clive.“The New Literacy.” The Bedford Guide for College Writers with Reader, Research Manual, and Handbook, edited by X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and March F. Muth, 11th ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2017, pp. 547–548.

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