Robert Thomas's List: Disinformation Team "A"

• Closed captioning was designed for deaf and hard of hearing consumers to be able to have access to television and programming.  However, in addition to the nearly 28 million deaf or hard of hearing people using closed captioning, millions of other people reap its benefits as well.  These audiences include: people learning English as a second language, young children learning to read, remedial readers, illiterate adults, and people watching television in noisy environments such as restaurants, bars and airports.
• The National Captioning Institute (NCI), a well-known captioning company in the United States, reports that people learning English for the first time find it easier to learn and understand idioms and other expressions by seeing them in print as well as hearing them.  A 1984 NCI study showed that hearing youngsters who watched captioned TV were able to significantly improve their vocabulary and oral reading fluency. While children are watching cartoons, videos and sitcoms, they can also be reading the captions.  Captioned television programs create a rich learning environment by allowing students to hear the words, see the words as captions and experience the meaning of the words by watching the images on the TV screen. This multi-sensory educational approach to reading comprehension has been found to be beneficial by reading and special education teachers as a way to motivate slow or reluctant readers, students with learning disabilities and individuals learning English as a second language.
• Institute for Disability Research and Training, Inc. (1995, December).  Presentation Speed and Vocabulary in Closed Caption Television.  Silver Spring, MD: Jensema, C. and McCann, R.

  • Citation 

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• the result of a survey of the English National Literacy Trust may be surprising:

   

  children who blog, text or use social networking websites have better writing skills than those who do not.

   

   

   

  A survey studied 3,001 English children aged nine to 16. It found that 24% had their own blog and 82% sent text messages at least once a month.

   

   

   

  73% used instant messaging services to chat online with friends.

   

   

   

  However, 77% still put real pen to paper to write notes in class or do their school homework.

   

  Six out of ten young bloggers think their writing skills are "very good".
• Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said that children and teens who use online technology, feel enthusiastic about writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries.

   

  So there is " … a strong correlation between kids using technology and skills of reading and writing."

• Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

  Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.

  • Citation: RICH, By MOTOKO. "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?." The New York Times. (July 27, 2008 Sunday ): 3479 words. LexisNexis Academic.