Teachers Without Borders's List: Writing

• two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in
• The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Thursday, also found that teens who keep blogs or use social-networking sites such as Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace have a greater tendency to slip nonstandard elements into assignments
• It's a teachable moment," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew. "If you find that in a child's or student's writing, that's an opportunity to address the differences between formal and informal writing. They learn to make the distinction ... just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing.
• Teens who consider electronic communications with friends as "writing" are more likely to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish the two.
• • Teens who keep blogs are more likely to engage in personal writing. They also tend to believe that writing will prove crucial to their eventual success in life.
  • Parents are more likely than teenagers to believe that Internet-based writing such as e-mail and instant messaging affects writing overall, though both groups are split on whether the electronic communications help or hurt. Nonetheless, 73 percent of teens and 40 percent of parents said they believe Internet writing makes no difference either way.

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