The New (Stanford) Literacy

As a reference librarian, I hear many complaints from faculty regarding their student’s inability to write: “They can’t write,” “They spend too much time on Facebook and Twitter–and don’t know how to construct complete sentences,”  “They don’t read books…how can they write in anything but text-speak?”  So, I was somewhat relieved to read Clive Thompson’s column “The New Literacy” (Wired, September, 2009) which reports on a new study that supports social networking and literacy skills.  To assess the impact of technology upon writing abilities, Standford University professor, Andrea Lunsford, has analyzed more than 14,000 student writing samples.  The “Stanford Study of Writing” concludes that technology is actually reviving the ability to write.  Lunsford discovered that students are writing more than any other generation—and it’s not all “bad writing.”  Researchers found that youth who participate in online writing are more skilled at adapting their tone and writing technique to the audience.  The most interesting thing about this study is the participant’s definition of “good prose” as being something that has an effect on the world.  For today’s young writers (at least those enrolled at Stanford), writing is about persuasion and debate.  As teaching librarians, we can serve as valuable resources in showing students how to find the right information to construct their argument— whether for a class paper or an online chat forum.  With all of this said, one cannot omit the fact that the study was conducted using Stanford students (I’d be curious to see how the study’s results would change using less privileged students).  Does anybody want to chat about it?