We're In the Midst of a Literacy Revolution

Mike Sauter sends in a piece from Wired profiling research by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford, from which she concludes that we don't need to worry about computers and the Internet causing a decline in general literacy. "[Lunsford] has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples — everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring. 'I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization,' she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it — and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."

Comments

Liar.

[geminidomino]

she concludes that we don't need to worry about computers and the Internet causing a decline in general literacy

lolwut? I c wut shee did thar. Were all loosing r minds, u no?

Re:Liar.

[Kokuyo]

I think you have a point but:

As an avid fanfiction reader I can say that I see both sides of the spectrum. Sure, a lot of it is abysmal but there are some masterpieces among them that overshadow even the originals from whence they are derived.

I believe the truth is this: The internet doesn't influence literacy all that much. I just think it puts both ends of the spectrum in starker contrast.

Also, I think chat logs can not serve as evidence. Just as spoken language differs greatly depending on who you are talking to, the purpose of communication has a big influence on the level you are using to bring your thoughts across. You seldom chat with your superior. You usually chat with peers. Few of us would use the same phrases, figures of speech and abbreviations in a professional document, yet most of us have at one point used such language, to a degree.

Re:Liar.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying, "I can't tell if that's Paris Hilton or a skanky white girl."

Re:Liar.

[jandrese]

I've always thought the "the internet is going to destroy literacy" argument was strange at best. I mean what do you do on the internet? You read, and write, and read. Then you look at porn. But still, kids are reading a lot more now than they did back when I was young. Back then they talked on the phone for hours instead. In some ways this internet culture is a throwback to Victorian times when people wrote letters to each other constantly.

Re:Liar.

[ChefInnocent]

In linguistics, we discussed how the older generations always think the young people are ruining the language. How language is always in a state of devolution from when the one pondering it remembers their youth. So, ever since the first speakers, language has devolved. Just for the record, your Proto-Indo-European is horrible. By the same token, your great great grand children will have no idea what you are mumbling.

Re:Liar.

[purpledinoz]

lolwut? I c wut shee did thar. Were all loosing r minds, u no?

I really hate people who type in this manner. It saves almost no time, so what's the point in purposely making the spelling error? What does it prove? That you're some sort of Internet badass? I don't think so, it makes that person look like a complete moron. One time, I ran into a message board where the whole thread was like this, my head almost exploded.

Re:Liar.

[Afforess]

my head almost exploded.

Don't you mean asploded?

Re:Liar.

[mcgrew]

The internet doesn't influence literacy all that much.

How old are you? The internet is mostly a text medium. When I was a kid (WAY before the internet), if you had a book under your arm everybody thought you were a nerd. If you had a slide rule they KNEW you were a nerd.

But most kids in my generation didn't read unless forced to. Today, all the kids read a lot, even if all they read is the internet and text messages on their phones.

Re:Liar.

[Chris Burke]

In linguistics, we discussed how the older generations always think the young people are ruining the language. How language is always in a state of devolution from when the one pondering it remembers their youth. So, ever since the first speakers, language has devolved.

That's great, as long as morons don't take that to mean "... and therefore your horrible grammar and spelling errors aren't actually errors, but the natural evolution of language." I've seen a lot of people who seem to think the fact that language evolves means that they are the instruments of said evolution, rather than semi-literate tards.

To them I say: Someday, "loose" may be the correct spelling of "lose". Until that future day, you still need to learn the difference because you're wrong.

Re:Liar.

[BrokenHalo]

But still, kids are reading a lot more now than they did back when I was young.

Which is exactly the point of the article. ;-) Yes, I know this is Slashdot, and etiquette requires that we don't read the article, but this one actually isn't too far off-beam.

But the prof's claim: "As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper." is slightly doubtful.

It might be largely accounted for by the fact that competition for university places is much more intense than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Plus the fact that students are aware that if they have a problem with their writing, most of the more egregious offences are easily picked up by grammar or spell-checkers, which were obviously unavailable to those of us who used dip-pens and inkwells. But I suspect it might only be a matter of time before smileys or other emoticons become manifest in "serious" work.

As she correctly says, it's a matter of knowing your audience. I wouldn't bother with emoticons when I am communicating with someone whom I know will appreciate subtle expressions, say, of wry irony, but some audiences need to be poked in the eye with a ";-)" to get the message across.

Re:Liar.

[Chris Burke]

I deliberately included that colloquialism, just for you. :)

Re:Liar.

[timeOday]

I agree, but on the other hand, I don't think grammar matters that much either way. The vastly more significant change brought about by the Internet is that far more people write and receive feedback on a regular basis. Feedback is crucial. As a kid, your mom will glance over your writing and tell you it's wonderful. In a college writing course the professor might bother to read a few pages of your writing throughout the semester, or more likely force a grad student to do it. On slashdot, you get feedback within minutes - and it's unvarnished feedback, too. Very quickly you learn how many ways people can misunderstand what you're saying, and how your foes intentionally misinterpret what you write. And you learn that long-winded writing tends to be ignored completely.

So I don't think grammar is the most significant thing, and I don't think simply giving more people the chance to write and be read is the most important thing (although it is important). The big revolution is feedback.

Re:Liar.

[yolto]

They'd better understand "Get off my lawn!" or there's going to be trouble.

Re:Liar.

[SlashDotDotDot]

TL;DR

Re:Liar.

[lysergic.acid]

True. Also, I think that digital communication has actually increased people's acuity to grammar and writing etiquette. For whatever reason, when it comes to hand-written notes and letters, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and other things considered to be part of "netiquette" are generally ignored. Part of it, I guess, is that people are more concerned with legibility and the message itself. If it's legible, and you can understand what's being conveyed, then the note/letter has achieved its purpose. It doesn't matter if the author wrote in all caps, used a bunch of abbreviations, left out words or made other grammatical errors.

But with digital communication, people get much more hung up on writing etiquette. Legibility is no longer an issue so the scrutiny gets placed on other things. Perhaps part of the reason is that people perceive typing to be a much easier and less laborious task than writing by hand, so there are higher expectations. If you misspell a word or leave out a comma, it's fairly effortless to go back and fix your mistake. And whereas it's harder to break the habit of writing in caps by hand, it's fairly easy to turn off Capslock on the computer. Add to that the immediacy of internet communication (chatrooms or IM versus a post-it note or letter), and it's a lot easier and more tempting to complain to the other person about your pet-peeves.

All of this is again compounded by the casualness of digital communication. A lot less time and work (and thus thought) goes into sending out an e-mail than mailing a letter. With IM, messageboards and chatrooms, you have an even more casual social atmosphere. As such, people are more relaxed about their writing etiquette and naturally make more mistakes. Add to that the fact that there's a much lower age barrier to digital communications (13 & 14-year-olds have cellphones these days and even a 12-year-old can post to a messageboard), and you start getting a false impression that the literacy level of society is dropping when it's quite the opposite.

Re:Liar.

[Spellvexit]

Having studied Latin a fair deal, I have a great appreciation for solid grammar, well-formed sentences, and intricate structures. I loathe the apparent devolution of language and despise the rampant misspellings, poor grammar, and horrific stream of consciousness run-ons I've witnessed on the boards and in gameplay.

However, language really is a self-correcting form of communication. I hate the use of "ur" as a bastardized "your," but linguistically speaking, it's pretty efficient. People who spell horribly usually spell with a more consistent logic than centuries of archaisms -- why not spell "dependent" as "dependant" when we have words such as "rampant, occupant," and attendant?" Other than the baggage caused by inherited languages, why do we persist in using "right" instead of "rite?"

In my lifetime, I've seen "donut" become the de facto spelling rather than "doughnut," and I haven't even lived that long. People can say poor spelling creates ambiguities, but our language is already rife with 'em. If a term becomes too ambiguous, the term will die in its collective usage, or split. We know from context what "your" means, otherwise we wouldn't step in to correct people when it's used in place of "you're." I think it's lazy, but from another perspective, it's could be considered an ever-changing process of optimization.

I try to remind myself of this. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Re:Liar.

[frenchgates]

An auto mechanic who has only a hammer is inferior to an auto mechanic with the same skill at car repair who has a full garage of tools. Words are tools for thought and if your vocabulary is stunted you are, in effect, dumber than someone with the same "IQ" but a much wider vocabulary. So be careful who you accuse of bigotry. They might accuse you of blind political correctness.

Re:Liar.

[Quothz]

The error is in number agreement. The phrase peers that doesn't should read peers that don't

"Communication that doesn't", however, is perfectly fine. "With peers" is a prepositional-type phrase.

What About Plagiarism?

[bezenek]

The Internet facilitates easy plagiarism. I assume papers for sale on the 'net generally have good grammar. Is it possible an increase in Internet plagiarism caused the increase in literary quality?

We certainly know no-child-left-behind did not help the early stages of the pipeline.

Just a thought...

-Todd

Re:What About Plagiarism?

[Krneki]

Or maybe the spell checking software is getting better and better. I can see more and more AI filters between our thoughts and the final expressions.

Re:What About Plagiarism?

[Entropius]

"The batter pushes currency through the wire." ... even with spellcheck my students manage to sound like dipshits (college EM lab)

I think...

[MyLongNickName]

I think that is what has been the definition of the modern society over the past four or five decades. We are no longer in a period where "revolutions" happen every so often, divided by long periods of stability. We are now in a period where the revolution is continual.

From material sciences to the internet revolution, we are seeing things happen on a monthly basis that have huge impacts on us. We are mostly numbed to this because we are used to seeing it. Yet go back three or four generations and look at how life was. Certainly nothing like today.

My mind still boggles at the fact that I can talk with people half way around the world without leaving my house. That I can collaborate with people with more ease than I would have been a decade ago who lived only fifty miles away. This ability to communicate easily, I think, is the foundation for all of the other revolutions we are seeing.

I wonder what this world will be like in fifty years. Will these revolutions help make this a much better place to live? Or will we find a way to fuck it up?

Re:I think...

[mcgrew]

Yet go back three or four generations and look at how life was. Certainly nothing like today

My late uncle remarked once that his parents were brought up at a time that wasn't very much different than it was a thousand years previous -- horses or feet for transportation, no indoor plumbing or electricity, etc. His mother (my grandmother) was born the year the Wright brothers took off at Kitty Hawk, and she saw the first moon landing. She was born when telephones were extremely rare, and died in 2003, after most people had cell phones and internet access.

Even in my own life there has been a raft of things invented and developed to the point that what was science fiction is now commonplace. Look at the old Star Trek -- self-opening doors, cell phones ("communicators"), electronic diagnostics in the sick bay, space shuttles, flat screen desktop computers, all were science fiction. I remarked about the medical tech in Sickness, pain, and death. And Star Trek.

I went back to the treatment room in ER with them, where they had her hooked to Star Trek machines kind of like the ones Dr. McCoy had, only Bones didn't have wires and tubes hooked to his patients. "Damn it, Jim," I can imagine him saying if his patients had wires and tubes in them, "I'm a doctor, not an engineer!"

When I had my tonsils removed at age six, they used ether to knock you out. Ether is horrible; it makes you feel like you're dying. When I had a hemmoroid operation in 2002, the doctor said "ok, you're going to sleep now" and when I came to it was hard to believe I'd even been unconcious.

My crazy friend Tom , the same age as me, said once when we were teenagers that someday you would be able to play records in your car. I said he was crazy. Well, he was, but he was right. We didn't have VCRs, let alone DVDs, or microwaves, or fuel injectors, air bags; hell, when I was a kid cars didn't even have seat belts.

I've said before, to someone my age, we live in a science fiction world.

College students?

[Jhon]

Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose

Why not study the "prose" of high-school students? Particularly the "prose" of the ever increasing number of high-school drop outs?

"Reviving [out ability to write]"? Yeah. And if I did a study that only looked at NASA engineers, I'd think we were all rocket scientists.

And Today is Reading Rainbow's Final Broadcast

[Colonel Korn]

But you don't have to take my word for it!

"The show will cease airing on PBS on Friday, August 28, 2009 after 26 years on the air."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Rainbow

duh duh DUH!

What do you mean the sky isn't falling?

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but... societal decline! The good ol' days! My generation and my recent ancestors' generations were the best, not like these spoiled rotten immoral kids! Everyone knows that Generation $NEWEST_BUZZWORD has been been corrupted by $NEWEST_MORAL_PANIC! This is obviously just some... some ivory tower elite INTELLECTUAL manipulating statistics (which every God-fearing American knows are less reliable than unexamined personal biases) to justify violence and sex in $NEW_MEDIA (which is much worse than the $OLD_MEDIA that I consume).

I agree

[Deag]

I found this interesting:

Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroomâ"life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It's almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

It makes a lot of sense. This idea of their being a golden age of people hand writing letters to each other is bullshit for the vast majority of the populace.

She might not be popular with some people in actually praising a new generation. I remember watching a discussion on some TV show once where a professor stated that in his experience the current young people were much more diligent and hard working than previous generations. It didn't go down well at all with the rest of the tut-tuting panel.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In other news, 500 gamers in Seattle = good sample

[bmcnally]

This sound familiar to the wonky research that was showcased a couple of weeks ago - that gamers are fat, depressed, and have an average age of 35. Data collection is everything. A sample of students taken only from Stanford, or Harvard, MIT, CalTech, is hardly representative of the nation as a whole. Those who get into these schools typically have SAT and ACT scores well above average - in both Math and English (viewing the demographics page at the study's homepage confirms this). In fact, if other research is to be believed, these are the types of people that are least likely to use Twitter, Facebook, etc excessively.

A more comprehensive study would grab a frequency weighted sample that looked at a larger number of students at large public universities, as well as a significant number of students from community colleges.

Unfortunately, when I go to the site, all of the pages under "methods" are giving me 404s.

Language is fluid, let it flow

[Laxitive]

I was happy to read this article. It reflects what has slowly become my perspective on online use of language.

Speaking as an immigrant who originally struggled with the English language for the first few years I spent in North America, I love English. I love how some parts make no sense, and how it's infused with slang from cultural experiences gathered from far and wide. Formal english is completely different from slang english, pigdin english, or online english... but I don't see the latter examples as _inferior_, simply different... wonderfully different.

People often confuse the notion of "writing English in a way that I can relate to" with "writing good English". This is not so. Language is most exciting when it is adulterated, compromised, and infused with the particulars of its speakers. I spent 3 years of adolescence in Louisiana, back in the 90s. While others were scoffing at the notion of ebonics, I was lapping up inner city slang: that beautiful, musical, profane prose. While others bemoan the so-called regression identified with online linguistic idioms, the 4-chanisms, and earlier the Jeff-K-isms, the flippant irreverence which with modern youth take ownership of their speech, I celebrate it.

Who wants to read things in the same way they've always written? Not to say that great writers of the past are stale - I still relish my Twain, Irving, Rushdie, and other masters of script - but I don't see the point in taking an adversarial perspective on the evolution of language.... and have no doubt, language IS evolving online. Literature is evolving online. The presentation is changing, the context is changing, the composition is changing, the references are changing... it's fucking exciting to watch.

-Laxitive

Re:Language is fluid, let it flow

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I have mod points that I wanted to use on other posts but this one forces me to reply.

I'm glad you enjoy English. I love it, myself. Unfortunately, I think you're a bit too generous with your praise of the beauty of dialects. Most to the point, you say:

Language is most exciting when it is adulterated, compromised, and infused with the particulars of its speakers.

I must disagree in the strongest terms. Language that incorporates seemingly random variations is exciting only to the extent that you enjoy solving puzzles over clear communication. On the contrary, to me language is most exciting when it communicates.

It can do so in many ways. Beautiful poetry can be hard to read but well worth it. Ebonics might be the only way to talk to some people. 4chan-isms may work on 4chan. (Personally, the learning curve is too steep for me; 12chan was my limit for understanding such things.) But none of these is useful outside their niche.

"Good English" does, in fact, exist. It changes and is influenced by all the things you mention but it is not rendered incomprehensible by them. It evolves slowly enough that it can be used as a common communications channel between *all* readers without regard to generation or lifestyle. When new words or ways of using the language are accepted into "Good English", they may sound a bit funny to an older generation but they don't prevent that older generation from understanding. Context should be sufficient to suss out the meaning.

When a new form of speech is sufficiently radical that it can't be understood by everyone (perhaps with a little effort) and when the author insists on using it anyway out of some misguided belief that their way of doing things is ordained by the universe as their right, then these wonderful, poetic, profane strains of the language become, to be blunt, wrong.

If someone speaks a strong flavor of cajun or ebonics or what-have-you, that's just fine. If they create written works where those flavors are so strong as to hinder understanding then offer up their works for the world to read, then they just don't write well.

For people who share my hobbies that mostly involve shooting, I often cite the example of Zediker's Handloading for Competition, a technical book concerning how to make ammunition. In the forward, the writer says he has a degree in English from Ole Miss and that this gives him permission to murder the language because he actually knows better. He then proceeds to murder the language repeatedly in the book, putting into print deep-south faux-regionalisms so thick as to be occasionally incomprehensible. If the book hadn't contained so much wonderful technical insight, I would have thrown it away after reading the first chapter.

Nobody has permission to murder the language if they want to communicate broadly. In limited circumstances, feel free to go nuts. Good things often result. But don't forget that, yes, there is such a thing as "Good English" and, most of the time, it's the preferred method of communication hereabouts. "Good English" is not merely "writing English in a way that I can relate to", it's writing English in a way we can all relate to.

Unless you don't speak English. :-)

Oh Really?

[mpapet]

So, her sample of *Stanford* students says we're in a writing revolution eh? Since Stanford's $36,000 a year in tuition from the bank of mom and dad it stands to reason the kids entering the institution have been matriculated to a similar degree before entering Stanford.

Let's replicate her experiment in a State college and see what the outcome is eh?

Re:tl;dr

[purpledinoz]

tl;dr

tl;dr

Re:The sins of youth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.
- Hesiod, 700 BC

Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.

- Assyrian tablet, 2800 BC

We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect
their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently
inhabit taverns and have no self control.
- Egyptian tomb, 4000 BC