Social media can add to the overall writing experience of students. You must be wondering how? Because it is social media that has resulted in a dozen of contractions of the English language and slangs. People use “u” instead of a proper “you” and the terms like “bae” are being utilized to refer to one’s sweetheart.
Proper grammar and punctuation have gone out of the window. Spellings, as mentioned above, have been shrunk to suit one’s writing style. And this has become a norm of the internet generation. But in this article, we will show how you can improve student writing with social media.
1. Efficiency=Editing Skills
Twitter, especially reign supreme in restricting your words with its 140-characters limit. This enables students to write to the point without going all over the place with their ideas or thoughts. Twitter, in general, instills in us the habit of keeping things short in our communication while at the same time allowing for the need for sentences and paragraphs to the bare minimum.
This helps students in writing down term papers as they develop the habit of reducing the unnecessary pronouns from their tweets and consequently from their academic writing piece.
2. Feedback Comes Naturally
Students through social media tend to achieve feedback immediately as the post is instantly shared and read by hundreds and thousands of readers at one point in time. That is the power of social media platforms.
Instantaneous feedback helps students shape the content therein. For example, an analogy not yielding desired results or fail to register a point as pointed by readers – a student can thus, quickly edit and publish it after necessary modifications.
3. It Builds Confidence
When writing on social media, it enables students to integrate their own voice to their written work. The subjects which are their strongest suit are often pursued more which is usually not the case when it comes to academic writing because whatever the teachers have assigned to the student, he will have churn content on the subject whether he likes it or not and that too under given deadlines.
When a writing piece is accompanied with your feelings, the words reflect those emotions. This a boost to your confidence as you are bringing the passion to the table. Experts say that due to this, students become better writers up to 60% and it is the same percentage of students who are engaged in managing full-time blogs.
The remaining 40% can look to try online format for writing and can transform their writing from good to great.
4. Prolific Counts
Although it’s not academic writing what students do on social media nevertheless they are involved in writing practice. This is one of the positives of social media. Students today don’t require convincing with regards to writing, although to guide them in the right direction falls on our shoulders (school/parents).
According to one study, a student spends 16 hours on a weekly basis during social networking which is more than the time spent on academic writing and recreational reading combined. So is it any wonder that social media has influenced writing?
5. Research And Write Collaboratively
Since connectivity has taken a whole new embodiment where students can now read thematerial and watch videos on the subject they are tasked with researching, across different institutions. Therefore, mere ninth graders are working in conjunction with the Master’s students at a university in order to write on topics then journeying solo.
6. Using A Grammar Guide App
Teachers should not worry excessively that online writing is failing to account for grammar in writing. With the renowned apps such as Grammarly and Pro Writing Aid etc. students can very well edit the written content for blogs and anywhere across social media platforms.
If we take the example of Pro Writing Aid, it provides valuable suggestions that when non-fiction text starts 25% of the time with transitions, it makes reading easier for the online audience. Teachers should be thankful for such apps as they also tend to point out overused words and run-on sentences.
7. Writing For An Audience
Your audience is the key as if they are not reading or appreciating whatever is it they are reading then what is the point to craft a writing piece, right? So in this digital age, it is essential that you keep track of your audience as to what they want.
The audience could be a student’s peers or the general public when they employ social media to post or share their written content.
In Conclusion
Writing has been reinvented and teachers and parents should get accustomed to this form of writing. Long gone are the days when you had to teach students on how to go about finding words in a dictionary to increase vocabulary and then having them to write those down.
Today the technology has made everything available at students’ disposal. Let them leverage social media to enhance their learning curve.
Author Bio: Thomas James is a teacher by profession. He is associated with one of the leading institutes in the country and loves to blog on education related topics. You can seek Cheap Assignments at Ready Assignment