Televison_Effects_on_Literacy

Watching television is a part of almost every young adult’s day. These days, people have a television in almost every room of their house. Television is watched for entertainment, to find out the news, learning, and many more things. Since it plays a major role in everyday life for most people, television can help us develop habits that affect how we speak, how we write, how we read, and how we listen, but it is generally ignored as a literacy practice. These habits that are developed from watching television can be helpful to our understanding of literacy altogether. Television easily changes the way most young adults talk. Television shows and movies are very influential on the vocabulary of young adults. Many young adults will talk like one of their favorite stars on a show. Take for example, The Jersey Shore. Tons of high school and college kids watch The Jersey Shore. Most of these kids watching the show picked up the term “grenade”, which basically means an unattractive girl. Young adults use the term “grenade” all the time, either in a joking or serious way. Also movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin could encourage some young adults to use more socially inappropriate words. These sorts of habits that are developed are not particularly useful when trying to give a speech or presentation. All these speaking habits developed by watching television are evolving how young adults are talking. Also television could be helpful to a vocabulary. Young adults absorb things from watching television. They can hear words or phrases on the television that they could never learn just from everyday life. Television gives us insight to multiple different ways people speak and different languages that people use. Writing can also be influenced by television. If a young adult were to watch a documentary or show on William Shakespeare or other famous writers, they could learn a lot about writing from watching how they wrote. Learning ways to write from these sorts of writers can be very helpful in writing. Also by watching some movies or shows, people could learn how to be more creative with their writing. Television could also have a bad influence on how people write. Watching too much television could negatively affect vocabulary. Watching nonsense shows like cartoons or others could cause you to use less sophisticated words, or use incomplete sentences while writing a paper or anything for that matter. While watching the television, people are listening to it. They want to hear the sound so they know what is going on. Listening to some show can be very beneficial to literacy. While listening, people pick up words from shows. Listening is the way that we learn everything from a television show or movie. Developing the habits talked about earlier would be much harder without listening. When you are listening to the television or a movie, you pick up information that can help you evolve your vocabulary and writing skills. Like mentioned before, though, some of these habits that are developed aren’t always the best. Still, listening to the television can be very beneficial to improving how we speak and write. Reading is not affected by television too much, but it still plays a role. An example would be watching the news. It almost takes the need of reading away. Instead of having to read the newspaper to figure out what is going on in your town, you can just watch the news instead. There are also shows and movies that can affect how we read. Shows about young adults using the internet or texting show and use acronyms, like The Jersey Shore using GTL. Any young adult that watches that show knows that when they read GTL it means gym, tan, laundry. Another show would be one called iCarly, where a girl has a web show and uses acronyms like lol, which means laugh out loud. Watching television, although it doesn’t seem like it, can change how you look at or read words. Watching television is changing literacy in young adults. It causes certain habits to develop in writing, speaking, and listening, that help young adults understand literacy even more. Some of the habits developed are not the best but it is still changing the way young adults look at the way they write, speak, read, and listen. Television Evolving Young Adults Literacy Taylor Bowland