April 2008 — News
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Study: Teens See Disconnect Between Personal and School Writing
Extra Credit According to the Pew/National Commission on Writing study, 50 percent of teens write something for school every day. Ninety-four percent use the Internet for research for their school assignments at least occasionally, and 48 percent sad they use the Internet for research at least once per week. More Information --D. Nagel |
Students see a distinction between the writing they do for school and the writing they do in their personal lives. While the vast majority of 12- to 17-year-olds (85 percent) engage in some form of electronic writing--IM, e-mail, blog posts, text messages, etc.--most (60 percent) don't consider this actual writing. That's one of the findings from a study released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools and Colleges.
The study, Writing, Technology and Teens, involved 700 students aged 12 to 17 and their parents, who were polled via phone in November 2007. It also included data collected from focus groups conducted in summer 2007 in four different cities in the United States.
According to the study, 73 percent of the teens surveyed said their electronic communications have no impact on on their formal (school) writing, and 63 percent said that "using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce" outside of school assignments. A full 93 percent of students do engage in some form of writing outside school, whether electronic or otherwise.
However, 57 percent of the teens surveyed said they do edit and revise their work more when they write on a computer--whether that writing be for school or not--and 64 percent admitted that conventions from their informal writing do creep into their formal writing occasionally (such as the use of emoticons and common abbreviations, like LOL).
"There is a raging national debate about the state of writing and how high-tech communication by teens might be affecting their ability to think and write," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew and co-author of the report, in a statement released Thursday. "Those on both sides of the issue will see supporting data here. There is clearly a big gap in the minds of teenagers between the 'real' writing they do for school and the texts they compose for their friends. Yet, it is also clear that writing holds a central place in the lives of teens and in their vision about the skills they need for the future."
