Multiple-Choice Text

I realized that I hadn't yet blogged about text-messaging and instant-messaging's effects on writing, so I decided to search Google and I found this article written by a graduate student.http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/oconnor.htm#a

While the writing was so sophomoric I wanted to jump through the screen and write the article myself, the author did make some interesting observations that re-affirmed some thoughts I had already considered and made me consider some new ideas as well.

The first point that I felt compelled to discuss was the need for teachers to teach different contexts for writing. Though many English teachers cringe at the thought or sight of IM and text-message writing, it is not going away any time soon. Thus, it is a new and different context of writing that members of the academic world can no longer ignore. Teachers could, as the writer suggests, use IM and text-messaging to teach students the importance of understanding audience. Another way teachers could use this new form of writing to their advantage is to allow students to write in the abbreviated style of IMs and text-messages when preparing to write longer, formal pieces. Such a strategy might be more motivating for students in that it might make the process of writing formal compositions seem less daunting. If this is the case, however, teachers must take steps to explicitly teach their students how to shift from one mode of writing to the next.

Equally interesting was the fact that, love or hate the new literacy created by IMs and text-messages, this generation of school-aged children is writing more than any generation since before widespread use of the telephone. A positive side-effect that I had not yet thought of, even if the writing itself isn't scholarly -- which certainly not all writing should be -- it still affords students an opportunity to transfer thoughts to written form. One other aspect that just occurred to me is the need to be able to multi-task while navigating the internet. Children and adults alike now intrinsically learn how to separate different cognitive tasks they are performing simultaneously. I think this skill, in part, contributed to the success of most of my AP students, to whom I assigned two books to read at the same time. Many of my colleagues (and most of my students) thought I was crazy, but something told me this generation, perhaps more than any previous generation, would be able to handle such a task. Imagine carrying on three different conversations at the same time in a face-to-face setting. I have a hard time remembering when my wife tells me to take out the trash, and that's just paying attention to one person.

So, we can either see all the bad habits that IMs and text-messages potentially create, or we can extract the positives from it to make our students achieve to their fullest potential through this new literacy.