English 99: Literacy Among The Ruins

Are our communication skills declining due to the vast internet use? Technology has given individuals the ability to do things that would otherwise be considered impossible. However, while technology has provided the ability to communicate with people halfway across the world and opened a comfortable space for teens, it is believed to have affected not just the interaction among others, but furthermore writing skills. Although technology and communication has given individuals the ability to do things that would not have been done before, writing online has had a negative impact on a person’s writing skills which can be proven through the writings of Malcolm X, Gannon, and Daum. Online writing has diminished the amount of time individuals

Referring to an educational setting, when students are instructed to write a formal paper they often leave mistakes on their paper unknowingly or unaware of their mistakes due to the comfortability they have gained through online writing and instant correction, also known as autocorrect. Autocorrect is the software function that makes or suggests corrections for mistakes in spelling or grammar while typing. Frank Gannon captured the point concerning absence of proof reading in his piece English 99: Literacy among the Ruins by allowing the audience to visualize the decline of writing skills among youths in his college class. Gannon begins the piece by describing to the audience his new position as a college “philosopher” educating college students that were unable to learn in a higher-level English class due to the automatic assumptions that the students would be “overly challenged” (Gannon 215). As any individual would, the students in the class began to assemble into their own groups: “the bored looking girls, the jocks and the Bosnian refugees” (Gannon 216). Gannon compares the bored looking girls and jocks writing stating that the bored looking girls, along with the jocks had a lower vocabulary compared to the Bosnian refugees which led to the conclusion that the Bosnian refugees include more details and had a stronger vocabulary due to the low amount of technology used in their country. Compared to America, Bosnia