Draft Difficult Paper #1

I found that the article on New Literacy by Clive Thompson was very interesting for many reasons. Thompson writes about a research study done by Andrea Lundsford, who collected 14,672 different writing samples from Stanford College students from various in class assignments all the way to internet blogs. She then continues on analyzing the findings and concluding that since we write so much more than people in the past we are amidst a writing revolution and that all the current forms of writing via texts, blogs, Facebook, etc. are actually revolutionizing our writing rather than damaging it. I definitely agreed with her for the most part, although I did question some of her facts.
The first thing that I questioned was that she collected approximately 1500 samples from Stanford college students. Stanford is known as one of the most prestigious schools already, so I do not feel that they are a good representation of the young population as a whole. They are all admitted on exceptional academics as it is so they already have an unfair advantage in writing over the Average Joe. If I were to use the Greek example, that would be like going back to the Greek scholars and sampling there writing and then stating that the entire Greek generation is much more literate than the average population used to be. I am not claiming that the research is void because I still agree with it, but not because of the Stanford student. I would be more accepting to it if she took a sample from many different colleges of every level.
The paper was also not very clear on the writing samples. How did she attain these and from which classes or web pages were they? They could be great samples, but the reader is still in the dark on the validity of the findings.
Even though there were a few parts that made me question the research, I still agreed with the logic of it. If I take personal experience into the evidence I have realized that for the most part my reading has gotten much better. When I write things on Facebook or texts they are not for a teacher to grade. A teacher can give me a bad grade and that’s my punishment. But when I post a public writing online for all my peers to read I am much more self conscious of the content because I know that I will not be getting graded, but somewhat judged by many people that I actually care about how they view me after the “class” is over. This causes me to constantly look up words I’m not sure if I spelled right, because when you write a text message you can’t just spell check it. This repetition causes me to learn the spellings and then get them right the first time.
I also feel that the percentage of young adults and under do use some form of media or texting to communicate. Facebook has become so much a part of everyday life that if you don’t have one you are actually missing out on information and even events that people post online. People don’t send invitations in the mail anymore; everything is done on Facebook so the pressure to have one is so great that I rarely meet a person who does not have a Facebook. I even got a wedding invitation on Facebook two days ago if that puts it into perspective.
Although there are so many advantages to it I have found that it causes some minor bad habits as well. Because of the mass writing craze, a lot of shorthand has developed because you can get the same point across while saving time or the space on your palate. In an essay I was writing last week I caught myself writing gonna instead of going to because I was so used to it. I caught it right away but it still showed me that we are creatures of habit so we still need to be careful and go back and check our work, even if we feel that we have wooed our peers with a masterful photo comment or wall post.