Facebook Affects Student Writing

Facebook, Twitter, texting, Second Life, e-mail — the list goes on. In the past few years, technology has saturated the life of the college student. These new mediums have opened the door to shorthand typing, abbreviations, emoticons and instant message lingo, causing some people to fear the decline of the formal English language. The question of whether it is making a difference in student's formal writing is debatable.

Texas A&M University Writing Center Executive Director Valeria Balester says it does not have an effect.

While there are still mistakes in student's grammar usage, Balester said she has not seen an increase or decline in the amount of errors in the 20 years she has taught writing.

"Any teachers who are assuming [errors] are increasing don't have any evidence for that. It's just anecdotal," Balester said.

Freshman architecture major Corinne Nelson said she doesn't think social networking plays a role in student's grammar abilities either.

"If someone has good grammar it's not going to make it worse," Nelson said.

According to "Mistakes Are a Fact of Life: A National Comparative Study," the number of errors has remained the same for almost a century. In this article, researchers Andrea and Karen Lunsford compared studies from different time periods measuring number of errors per 100 words in students' papers. Separate studies from 1917, 1930, 1986 and 2006 each reported the number of errors around two, with ranges from 2.11 up to 2.45.

Types of mistakes made, however, have changed slightly, Balester said, and in these cases some technology may be playing a role.

Spelling mistakes moved from the top of the list 80 years ago, to No. 5 on the list. Wrong word choice is No. 1.

One plausible explanation for this shift is the spell check option on word processing programs, which catches misspelled words but does not flag homonyms and proper nouns.

"In this case, many of the wrong word errors appear to be the result of spell-checker suggestions. A student trying to spell ‘frantic,' for example, apparently accepted the spell-checker's suggestion of ‘fanatic,'" the study stated.

Common errors such as confusing ‘its' and ‘it's,' comma errors, verb tense shifts and capitalization errors have remained a problem.

A&M technical writing and composition professor Cindy Raisor said she has noticed a change in student's attitude toward these errors.

"Students are still not putting the commas in the right places or writing run-on sentences occasionally, but I think where I am seeing a change that concerns me is that they don't seem to care anymore," Raisor said.

In the past, students might not have known the grammar rules, but they were active in trying to correct them. Now, with social networking and instant messaging, using shorthand and leaving out commas, apostrophes and periods is part of the protocol, Raisor said.

"It's almost like that's a formality that is inappropriate for that kind of situation,"

Raisor said.

As for assigned papers, Raisor said her students have for the most part been able to distinguish between the two contexts and switch back into formal style and tone. 
E-mail correspondence is another story.

"In media with e-mails I have seen a definite decline in grammar usage and punctuation," Raisor said. "Students, instructors, professors and other people in this world are relying heavily on quick information, quick answers, so we are not communicating formally in writing."

Balester said students do not change tone when e-mailing friends or professors.

"A student writes an e-mail, and they think an e-mail is informal, and they are not thinking ‘e-mail to professor formal, e-mail to friend informal," Balester said.

However, Balester said once students know to make the distinction, the problem
goes away.

"I think the key is them understanding and thinking about audience every time they write something. They need to consider it before they put their hands on the keyboard," Balester said.

Raisor encourages her students when writing to picture the person on the other end of the message. 

"When we do that, we are more deliberate about our writing. We are more conscious of what we are saying and how we are saying it," Raisor said. "I think picturing that person sitting on the other end slows you down. It helps you to be more aware of your style, content, and how that message will be received."