The week before last, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released research on how growing up "totally wired" is impacting teens' formal writing. I had a chance to interview Pew's senior researcher Amanda Lenhart and Richard Sterling, the emeritus head of the National Writing Project about the report...

Ypulse: What surprised you the most in these findings [what surprised me was how many teens still write by hand when they're "writing"]?

Amanda Lenhart: There were many findings that I found surprising. In particular, I was heartened by the number of teens who said they enjoyed the writing they do, both for school and for themselves. Of course, as the writing is of their own choosing, they are more likely to enjoy what they write outside of school than in-school, with 90% of teens saying they enjoy out of school writing "some" or "a great deal," and 67% expressing similar levels of enjoyment with their writing for school.

YP: How do you explain this disconnect? 73 percent of teens believe their informal communications don't impact their writing yet 64 percent admit that they do. Ideal vs. real?

AL: Certainly I think some of what is going on here is the difference between the way we would like to be and the way we actually are. But I also think that for many teens, these impacts are relatively minor and accidental, and as teens grow older they get better at keeping these informal styles out of their formal writing. Also, other data in our study suggest that teens have a neutral view of technology. They see it as a vehicle for expression, but ultimately feel responsible for the quality of the ideas expressed in the writing they produce.

YP: The teens talked about wanting to write for an audience - why do you think there aren't more teens keeping public blogs with more formal writing for an audience vs. using a blog as casual communication with friends?

AL: In our focus groups, teens did talk about the motivation of writing for an audience broadly. We don't have data that suggests one way or another that more teens are keeping open public blogs or have casual blogs limited to friends. But regardless, both of those types of blogs have an audience, or at least an imagined audience. Whether you're writing mini op-eds as a blog post or narrating the story of your life to your friends, you're still writing, and my sense from the educators that I've talked to is that they think that both kinds of blogs are beneficial.

YP: Do you think casual digital communication is helping teens' writing in some other way we haven't quantified? Is there genius in using acronyms or finding ways to be economical with language?

Richard Sterling: It's important to remember that language is changing all the time, most often very slowly. We use fewer commas than we did fifty years ago; our sentences tend to be shorter, especially for communications that are sometimes called transactional. One may even compare the language of a Henry James novel to Norman Mailer's. If there is "creep" then teachers will be happy to say when and where such informality is appropriate. But, to the extent that experiments in language add a dynamism and freshness to language, it could well be leading to innovation both in thought and process. It is too early to say whether it will be a dead end street or a new vista!

YP: What do you think educators can take away from this research, especially writing teachers?

RS: The good news is that young people are writing more than ever. They are communicating more often with more people, and they are creating content on the internet in significant numbers. The challenge for teachers is to capture the energy and enthusiasm that teens display outside of school and build bridges to the curriculum in school. Teachers need to help students learn a variety of writing skills, understand when and where to use formal and informal language and to push their thinking in writing. Our society needs young people who can understand and express complex ideas, ideas that we know teens will need as they progress though their education. That is the task for educators.

Posted by anastasia