The Power Of Writing Essay

In Michaela Cullington’s article “Does Texting Affect Writing?” she addresses a superstition that the older generation of today believes to be a possible issue. This issue is the potential for texting via cell phones to negatively affect young peoples’ abilities to write correct, formal papers. In her writing, she logically dismissed these accusations by providing proof against this believe while presenting her defense in a persuasive manner.

In recent years, the rushing tide of typing has overwhelmed the once necessary skill of handwriting. As the days pass by computers and other 21st century electronics are becoming more and more a part human lives. Gone are the constant needs for pen and paper, often times all that is needed for notetaking is a laptop and working fingers. A recent article published by Anne Trubek titled “Handwriting Just Doesn’t Matter” analyzes the importance of handwriting in the computerized world that is lived in today, as well as through a discussion on the teaching of cursive and other handwriting exercises in schools. Using a mix of pathos, logos, and minor amounts of ethos, Trubek is able to comprehensively convince her audience that handwriting is not as important or useful a skill as it used to be.

Although her study supports the hypothesis that texting and writing have no relationship to one another, Cullington (and the researchers whose work she analyzed) recognizes the significance of new technology and society’s evolving modes of communication. She writes, “The use of text mes- saging as a common means of communication is becoming increasingly popular; therefore, this issue should continue to be examined” (94). Not surprisingly, the popularity of texting has increased since the time of Cullington’s article and so too has research on its effect on student writ- ing. What Cullington may not have anticipated, however, are the ways in which texting itself has changed. How might innovations such as Internet access, various “apps,” and software advance- ments have changed texting in the mere two years since Michaela Cullington published her article in 2011?

Not So Fast,” Andrea Lunsford argues that rather than leading to a new illiteracy, the digital technologies in the modern world help students to develop their ability of writing. Not only that students are daferrors than 25 years ago, actually with less spelling errors. In order to help students with the challenges, the teacher should offer solid instructions and encouragement rather than derision.

People claim that new developments have caused kids to be so dependent on their devices, that they can't think for themselves. This claim can also be turned around by saying that technology has given kids more opportunities and chances to learn, and in particular, more opportunities to write (Source 7, Clive Thompson). An example of this is a study done at Stanford University, where it was discovered that Stanford students did a stunning 38 percent of their writing outside of the classroom (Source 7, Clive Thompson). With the developments of E-mail, texting, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, younger people are constantly writing in their every day lives. In the past, people would, for the most part, stop writing once the finishes their education. Now however, people are more comfortable, and more used to, writing. And while the argument that technology has decreased level of the vocabulary and vernacular of young people is true in some cases, the increase in writing shown by young people has led to a greater ability to convey information to other people, and a greater comfort in talking to people they don't know (Source 7, Clive Thompson). As Andrea Lunsford says, "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek Civilization" (Source 7, Clive

Writing is often considered mundane and banal to some students. In fact, people have even written things down since the beginning of time. I dreaded writing until I had Mrs. Dunlap for 4th block English during my 8th grade year at Mount Juliet Middle. This is the story about how she made me the writer I am today with what I like to call ‘Write’speration.

In the beginning of this class I looked at writing as a chore. The word “writing” drummed up a vision of a thin man sitting at a cafe with wire rimmed glasses and a goatee. He was wearing dress pants that are too short and crisply creased with a matching vest. He sipped his coffee with his pinky finger curled and was completely lost to the world around him as he typed quickly then paused to read his work. He was born to write and highly organized; a perfectionist. He was all the things I thought I was unable to be, until now.

When people speak to one another they usually do so very rapidly, and subconsciously. The opposite can be said of writing as it is more slow, and deliberate, often requiring intense thought. As demonstrated already in English 101 it is necessary to visualize, plan, and draft while writing. The principles of oration were separate from those of writing until the Age of Information, with the development of modern technology. The proverbial gap was abridged with texting. It allowed writing to catch up to the speed of speaking. Unfortunately while it did match the speed, it took away formalities used in writing such as spelling, punctuation, and using capital letters.

One was the political organization of a society. Some societies, such as ones with crowded and significantly larger populations, had a greater need to have a stored record of information compared to smaller societies, such as records and accounts of trade and storage. In fact, according to Diamond, early writings were only things like records, archives, or transactions. Things like prose and propaganda did not begin until hundred of years later. Another factor was the geographic boundaries that kept writing from being spread throughout the world. Writing was a process which took the course of many many years to fully develop, let alone teach to others. These obstacles made spreading reading or writing to other societies much more difficult. A final factor was the small number of people who were actually taught to read, write, or teach in societies that had accomplished the ability to do so. According to Diamond, in the past, only scribes aiding kings or temples were common, and writing was not common to the

Clive Thompson’s “On the New Literacy” discusses the argument that technology is causing our youth’s writing skills to decline. He starts by mentioning a study that shows writing has actually improved and is having a re-birthing of sorts. Andrea Lunsford, A writing professor at Stanford University, ran the study, collecting nearly 15,000 student writings ranging from class assignments to blog posts. She discovered Stanford students were writing outside of the classroom 38 percent of the time and due to the internet, these writings had a bigger audience, which in effect made the students writing better. He states that Stanford students were less enthused about in-class writing because the only audience would be their teacher

Developments in digital technology are expanding our understanding of “writing.” To the extent that technology is available and appropriate, by the end of their first

Many others believe that cursive writing should not be taught in school because the technology we have now doesn’t require us to use cursive writing. However, by writing in cursive, it allows students to write faster due to only having to connect the letters together. Students who took notes using cursive learned better, retained information longer, and got the concept of new ideas quicker than students who took computer notes. Studies show that after just 24 hours after a lecture students who take notes on the computer were more likely to forget

Online media is pushing literacy in different and cool directions. Kids and teenagers today are coming up with new ways of writing. Clive tells us in The New Literacy,¨The brevity of texting, and status updating, teaches young people to develop haiku-like concision.¨ When kids text they write short and fast things and don't go into much detail. Since we are changing the way we write, in four years from now when we have even more new technology imagine how many more ways of writing there will be. He also says that, ¨For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.¨ But still most people think

Writing has the power to solidify ideas, for better or for worse. Putting things on paper makes it much clearer than anything you keep in your head. For example, when Skeeter Phelan stumbles upon a book describing all the Jim Crow laws of the South, they suddenly become much more profound—much more real. Skeeter had been exposed to these ideas for her entire life (“We all know about these laws”), but this was “the first time (she’s) seen them written down”.By writing them down, the rules became more powerful and more like actual laws rather than something that can be

(Bui in Aragon-Mendizabal 2016) This is because cognitive processing is shallower when using a keyboard. (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014) Most typists tend to take notes verbatim, (Kiewra in Holz 2016) leading to very superficial levels of actual understanding. (Aragon- Mendizabal 2016) On the contrary, higher order thinking such as attention and memory are required when people take hand written notes. (Aragon- Mendizabal 2016) When taking notes longhand, writers must summarize, paraphrase, and relate concepts to one another in order to record the information in a timely enough manner. (University Wire 2016) Also, proofreading abilities are reduced on typed work, possibly due to the over usage of tools such as grammar and spelling check. (Lessien 2013) Success for students who hand write is documented not only for college students, but for young learners as well.