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Kids Improve Writing Online
aelfric35 writes "Ben Franklin advised his son not to allow schooling to interfere with his education. Even though many have disparaged the effects of IM on schoolchildrens' prose, some kids are actually becoming better writers by participating in online communities. Henry Jenkins writes in MIT's Technology Review about how some kids are gaining writing and editorial experience far beyond what their schools can offer by participating in Harry Potter fan fiction forums (sorry about the alliteration)."
I'm a senior in high school at the moment, and I see a lot of kids who have become disgusted with misspellings and abbreviations. They make it a point to be sure that correct grammar and spelling is utilised, whether online or in the real world. There is a backlash against IM idiocy. However, grammar is still poor, as most kids are not taught the rules of the english language, I'm learning more about sentence construction in my German class than I have in English over the past 13 years.
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
In my early college years, shortly after I discovered the 'net, I got involved with a number of writing communities...writing Robotech fanfic, writing alt.pub.dragons-inn and alt.pub.havens-rest series, and eventually the Superguy listserv. And it certainly did improve my writing, over time.
The secret is practice and peer review. That's the best way to build writing skill, whether the Internet is involved or not. The Internet makes it easier, that's all.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
It is even worse with only children. They are seriously deprived when the are homeschooled and it can really effect their quality of life when they are older. There is a lot more to school than gaining knowledge.
I think anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time looking through the Harry Potter fanfic community would realize that this is not a place you want your children freely roaming about or practicing their writing skills. That is not to say that there aren't plenty of wonderful writers out there who write really amazing stories. Some of these stories are full of real emotion and demonstrate the skill of a number of talented, undiscovered writers. Rather, I'm simply saying that an unsupervised child in the world of Harry Potter fanfiction might wonder how exactly Severus Snape managed to get pregnant with Draco Malfoy's baby, and why exactly Ginny Weasley became so much of a harlet.
Having been exposed to both sides of the HP fanfiction, and having rejected both of them for my own reasons, I would have to say any parent that would encourage their child to join in this type of community has certainly not been exposed to it in its entirety and would be sorely mistaken to assume it is a safe place for children to roam.
For one thing - if you knew proper grammar, sentence-structure etc. it would have made your comment that much easier to read. I'm not a grammar Nazi. But in your case I spent a lot more time concentrating on the process of reading what you wrote rather than thinking about what you wrote. This is mainly because your lack of capitalisation means that your comment just looks like one big blob of text. Also your sentence structure sucks. You put commas where there should be full-stops which means that the flow of the text is wrong and I have to stop to think about what you really meant. At least you attempted to put it in paragraphs.
Good grammar is about making it easier for your readers to read what you wrote by breaking up the text into logical structures that are easy for the eyes to parse. Whenever I see something on the web that is just one big blob of text (no capitalisation, no paragraph breaks etc.) with very bad spelling I don't read it unless the information it contains is vital. Why? Because it gives me a headache and strains my eyes just trying to parse the text to get to the information. It's not about elitism. It's about saving my eyes and head from having to read 3 times slower and concentrating twice as hard to get to the information than if the author had bothered to try to separate the words into a proper structure and ran it through a spell-check.
Having proper grammar and spelling is like having everyone using standard C or standard C++ rather than weird variant number 1000 that only works on this computer when there is a full moon. It might be more boring and staid, but having a standard framework that everyone agrees on makes it much easier to understand what the other guy is talking about. Smaller groups may use their own special deviations (which make it harder for those outside their group to understand their programs). If new deviations become popular enough they get added to the standard. But still having that standard framework is vital, and those who choose to deviate from it should still be fully grounded in it so they can communicate easily with others not in their special "group".
For every online community that may improve the writing of a handful of the kids who participate to it, there are 10'000 online communities where everyone (mostly native english speakers) spells like english was their fifth language that they're still learning. That's like saying that watching the debilitating cartoons on the usual channels improves kids' imaginations and creativity. It's a complete pile of arse.
There is a tiny minority who are improving themselves despite the apalling effects of the absence of grammar and spelling education, but pointing at those and saying "oh, look, the system works!" is just plain stupid.
Daniel
Carpe Diem