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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)."
"...alliteration"? I guess the better writing and vocabulary doesn't apply to me.
I LeArN3d 4ll mah SkillZ OnliNe. it iz teh b3sT wAy d00d!!!
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?
I can see the handwriting on the wall, soon the buggers' invasion will allow Locke and Demosthenes to obtain unprecedented political authority! Something must be done!
On a more serious note, if you want some highly interesting reads on how "schooling interferes with your education," read some stuff by John Taylor Gatto. It's scary 'cos it's true.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
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
Ah, I can remember it like it was yesterday... Back in the day, downloading erotic stories from BBS's, printing them on the trusty old Epson dot-matrix, and reading them before going to bed. Porn has improved my reading skills and my imagination.
Even today, I'm sure it still has the effect of improving hand-eye coordination and strengthening my forearms.
Three cheers for porn!
It is no suprise to me that the kids participating in online forums are doing well, when they're doing things they want to do they will put in more effort and energy. It is a given.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm 17, and senior editor of a website that is read by about? 13,000 people a day, and trust me, my writing skills have greatly improved. I write daily news and reviews, and over the last 5 years working at this site have developed a unique style.
There are two things that have contributed to my becoming a better writer: One, writing lots - my "hobby" has made me write more than I would of ever written normally at this stage of my life, and two, when you are read by 15,000 people, a couple people out of those 15000 point out every little error you make.. and I have learned from those errors.
My main focus is reviews and analysis of blah, and the experience i have gained online has shown up well in school through my commentary's and other literary analysis thatI do, my english grades are much improved over where they were several years ago, and each year get better. (If only I could make these skills blatently evident in college applications *cough* columbia's fu foundation *cough*).
School, in tandom with the web have made me a much better, and much closer to a college level writer. I think the key thing about the web is that it has removed the age barrier. I started in 7th grade, and I wrote from a kids perspective. As I grew up, my writing also grew up to the point that now only do I do the writing, I also run much of the site. I don't think that most of my readers know that I am still in highschool. I am infinitly grateful for the web to have presented me with thise opportinities. I frankly don't know where I would be without it. (I started using the web in '93... thanks to a brand new school with a brand new computer lab)
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.
Even though many have disparaged the effects of IM on schoolchildrens' prose, some kids are actually becoming better writers by participating in online communities.
I don't get why people say this. You could claim that IM faciliates poor English, but I don't see this as an direct effect. How could a program turn words and structure into that s*** you find in chatrooms?
I think kids are just farking lazy. While IM allows them to write horrible sentences without being screeched at by teachers, implying that poor prose is caused by IM is a stretch. These are the kids who, don't know when to, use commas, or won't use the correct words, even if they're forced. IM just allows that trend to solidify into habit, since they're all chatting instead of watching TV or talking on the phone. Think about it: if computers didn't exist, when would these people write at all?
wold u disagre?
In high school, I offered a classmate (in the accelerated English class, mind you) the chance to break my physics bridge if he wrote a pro-choice paper, mainly because I was sick of hearing his Christian ramblings during class. I'm undecided on abortion, but I wanted to understand how someone like him would argue against his beliefs. I saw a perfect opportunity to challenge his arrogant moral zeal, the same flavor that makes the rest of the world hate us and makes me want to break his face. When I saw his draft, I almost cried. The writing was so unstructured that I could hardly understand anything. The kid couldn't conceptualize a thought he didn't agree with, much less express it in a quasi-coherent form.
When I started using IM, my anal-retentive friend would scream at me if I didn't include puncuation, or capitalize my sentences. Now, I can't stand when others don't do the same, and my writing has benefited tremendously. If I write a paper and check it once, I catch most errors, and figure out more effective ways to arrange sentences. Your ear will learn syntax and structure, even if you don't. Writing benefits writing, and the only harm inflicted by IM is allowing kids to write how they want. If you read any number of high school papers (my dad used to teach 10th-11th grade English), you'd understand. The difference between those papers and IMs? Well, they capitalize their sentences, and they're considerate enough to include periods.
Seriously!
No, it hasn't really improved my grammar or spelling (sorry grammar nazis), but through the obscene number of posts I've made since I've started contributing to slashdot discussions I have refined my writing skills. In my quest to come across intelligently and post something that people will want to read I've gained valuable communication skills. For evidence I simply consider how much better I do with respect to karma than when I first started posting, sure the karma bonus helps and I've probably learned to be a bit of a karma whore (why post something that no one will read) but I do believe a significant increase in the number of my comments that get modded up is due to writing skills I have improved by posting to slashdot.
As well I've even tried writing short stories and posting them on my site, not that they're any good but it's fun to put up something that someone might read (even if it's only a couple friends who give pleasently baised reviews:). I don't get to write as much as I'd like to but I've found I very much enjoy doing it and I am sure I never would of started if it was not for the ability to post them online even though no one will read them but a couple friends who I could have given them to anyway.
It doesn't matter if it's posts to slashdot or short stories on my site, the online community has inspired me to write things that require thought and that cannot help but cause my writing abilities to improve. Now I merely await the trolls who shall flock to point out that this post isn't well written at all (hey it's 1 am here!).
I stole this Sig
I came to the conclusion that by learning Latin I actually learned a lot about my own language (which is Dutch, by the way).
In fact, exercises almost exclusively consisted of translating from Latin and not the other way around.
An interesting aspect of Latin is that the grammatical structure relies more on declinations (word endings); and word order in Latin sentences does generally not correspond to that of the translation in e.g. English or Dutch. Translating a Latin sentence involves looking up unfamiliar words, and figuring out the grammatical functions and relations of the words in the sentence. After the analysis comes the synthesis: writing a grammatically correct sentence in Dutch (or English, etc.) that accurately represents the meaning of the Latin sentence. I am sure that the skills thus learned are also helpful when it comes to expressing original thoughts.
Show me a language, other than a manmade one like Sanskrit (yes, it was codified, organized and "fixed in stone" about 2000-2400 years ago), that isn't. All languages evolve, that's what makes them "living" languages (as opposed to so-called "dead" ones like latin, ancient greek or classical arabic). You described a pidgin, which English definitely isn't. English has been evolving and in use as its own language for over 1500 years.
If we only had one language (like your example of Esperanto), it, too would begin to evolve as new technologies, etc. came into being. Esperanto lost popularity because it was too simple of a language -- it didn't contain enough complexity to convey the meanings necessary to carry on an intellectual conversation.
Languages, dialects and words evolve because of communication needs. Imagine if I said something like "this is wonderfully spicy food." English uses the word "spicy" for (at least) two different meanings: "flavorful from having a number of spices added", and "hot, as in chili peppers." A language like Spanish has evolved its own word (picante) for the latter meaning, and thus if I were to say "esta comida es deliciosamente picante," you'd know immediately that I love hot-spicy food.
It's not elitist to ask that people learn and use good grammar or spelling. Grammar is what gives sentences meaning. You can completely change the meaning of a sentence by misplacing a comma (I know, I spent an hour defending one sentence in my philosophy thesis because of an ambiguous comma) or other punctuation mark, just as you can make a sentence very difficult to read by using "it's" (it is) instead of "its" (belongs to "it").
Granted, English is a horribly over-complex language that has adopted words and phrases from a variety of other (often non-related) languages, you said it yourself - it's extremely difficult to find a replacement for it. I'm not about to say that everyone should learn English and nothing else -- far from it, I speak/understand 3 languages (only one of them very well, anymore) and find it attrocious that Americans can barely speak their own language, let alone at least one more -- but, it has become the dominant language of information, and like it or not, especially because so many people speak it, it's very important to follow the rules (and the exceptions) in order to be understood.
Just for an experiment, if you want to see how much more effort it is to have something that's just "understandable," go read some Middle English like Chaucer, where words were spelled phonetically instead of according to specified rules (and the spellings change between instances of the words). You practically have to read it aloud if you want to understand it easily. There's a reason why grammar and spelling standards evolved within languages.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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