Analysis Of Does Texting Affect Writing By Michaela Cullington

Michaela Cullington was a former student at University in Pennsylvania when she wrote the essay of “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Have you ever thought if texting truly effects our writing style when it comes to college levels? Cullington did research of her own from different people group asking this question. Her thesis sentence was “IT TAKES OVER OUR LIVES” (…). The way that she capitalized all the letters is something that can engage the reader and the curiosity of knowing what is taking our lives?

In her essay "Does Texting Affect Writing?", Michaela Cullington presents her argument that texting does not impact formal writing written by students. She discusses the concerns presented by many people about how texting language can transfer into writing, but through the use of personal experiences and credible sources she discusses how this is not true. Her use of multiple different studies and situations help boost her argument and allow the reader to truly see how students actually do formal writing. She presents a strong argument as to why those who believe students don't have the control and knowledge to write formally, instead of with text speak, are wrong.

An essay titled "does Texting Affect Writing?" was published by Michaela Cullington while she studied to gain her masters degree in speech and language pathology at Marywood University. In her essay she claims that texting and texting language neither benefits or harms a students academic writing. Michaela Cullington asserts that a conspiracy has been going around concerning how texting can limit a students writing ability in ways such as not being able to convey emotion in writing, forgetting how to write a formal English paper and use correct punctuation, and most of all a decline in spelling.

Several different citations to back up each side of the discussion are present which allows Cullington to disprove the opposing party. “This debate became prominent after some teachers began to believe they were seeing a decline in the writing abilities of their students. Many attributed this perceived decline to the increasing popularity of text messaging and its use of abbreviations”. This is a direct acknowledgment of the opposing argument that is later disproven in the article where she writes “...because they are engaging in written communication rather than oral speech, texting teens learn how to convey their message to a reader in as few words as possible” (Cullington 2010 p. 4). The ability to show how the other side is incorrect is what makes this paper so effective in its debate on whether or not texting affects

With the assistance of classroom instruction, and practical application I have refined my writing process. In the first graded essay, I learned my paper was not written to capture a specific audience as I intended it to. Applying what I learned after the review, and practice of critical thinking helped me create a map of what I wanted to write about. I asked myself questions to help me clearly identify the audience that I planned to address, and outline the main points. Another observation I made after reviewing my graded essays was the lack of use, or placement of keywords throughout the paper.

In order to make her audience keep interests in her speech, she also uses rhetorical device - irony. Where she mentioned in the sixth paragraph that the survey which is made by National Association of employees in 2001, shows 38 percent of the employers complained the schools inadequately taught reading comprehension. While the concern and the curiosity raised among readers, this persuasive technique have effectively enhances the power of Gioia arguments that her audiences will agree to take her side. Along with strong logos appeals, writer also effectively makes the allusion

When I registered for English 111, I held the personal belief that the whole process of proper writing restrained and suppressed the cleverness and inventiveness of story-telling. I pondered the question, “Is it possible for me to write a proper essay that can satisfy my inner story-teller and fulfill all the requirements of a college level paper. Immediately, my unease was addressed with our class’s opening assignment a reflection essay that requested me to write about what I thought were the weaknesses and strengths of my writing abilities . In addition, I was asked to discuss my personal writing goals and what I hoped to improve on throughout the semester. My unease, preconceptions, and insecurities about learning and using writing processes and techniques were disclosed, declared, and visible by the essay.

If I was a writing teacher, I would have my students write both fun, creative stories and boring, research papers. I think this would make them more excited about writing but they would also have to learn how to write research papers. I would let them pick their topics of research papers so they don’t have to research topics that they aren’t interested

The elements of non-fiction writing play a beneficial role when attempting to teach readers. Some, like characterization or style, can add interest to a reader’s imagination, while others, including arrangement and issues just cause readers to produce extra thought. Most people are unaware that the elements of non-fiction writing can even aid them in understanding their reading text better. Olga Khazan, author of “No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problems,” presents issues, anecdotes, and questions in her article to inspire her readers to follow her specified methods.

When writing an essay or article you need to be able to keep the audience’s attention. Keeping the reader’s attention through your essay is important because you want your reader to stay interested in the essay and not get bored and stop reading. In Roxane Gay’s “A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories”, she uses multiple techniques to keep her reader’s attention. When you are writing, use different techniques such as, emotion and examples/evidence to your argument.

In reading Lamott’s essay I found myself compelled to keep reading. It was the first time I read an article on how to be a better writer that basically says, do your worse work, and then learn from it. Interestingly enough there are components in her article that I can relate too such as in paragraph five where she discusses the initial writing and not being able to start the writing process. I can relate to this because when writing I sometimes stare at the computer screen thinking of the right words to open my essay with, even though I have ideas for other parts of the paper I am left stuck at the start line. Overall her article brought a type of excitement to me as I read it, almost as if it has given me hope for writing, especially with the thought of a five page paper lingering in the back of my mind.

Lindsey Pollak provides suggestions to ease the transition from student to career for the recent, or soon to be college graduate. The lucid writing style she uses in her book provides a sense of comfort to an inevitably stressful period in our lives. Pollak start’s off the chapter encouraging the reader to not worry about the things we have not done, or should have done. It would be easy for me to get caught up on the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.

In this chapter, John Bean suggest that beginning students think of writing as a separate skill when actually it is an integrate part of the critical thinking process. When I think of what Bean is saying, I can hear classmates saying, “I will just BS this assignment. ” Students tend to think that as long as they can write a decent paper then the content nor the process are very important. I like how Bean makes the writing element such a crucial part of learning so that one is not successfully achieved with the other.

Making sure there is minimal grammar errors is important, because it will make it easier for the readers to understand the essay, just like the sentence and thesis errors. When I would review my drafts for each essay, I started to look harder for these errors with each essay as the class progressed. I started to find more and more errors that I know I would not have found in the beginning of this class. There is an article that helped me learn to truly revise my essays, the title is, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers”, it is by Nancy Sommers. It is about different strategies students can use to revise their paper.

The class would then come back together as a whole, with each group discussing the grade they gave the response and why. Mrs. Lanza would then reveal the grade she gave the response, hoping that each group fell within one point value and had relatively the same constructive criticism to give. Following this, students worked on independent writing assignments on MyAccess. Accommodations/Modifications: While working on evaluating student responses to the PRCs, Mrs. Lanza utilized the document camera to project the selected responses onto the whiteboard. In addition to visually seeing the responses, Mrs. Lanza also read the responses orally to ensure that students who had trouble seeing the responses could hear them instead.