Writing plays a major
part in my everyday life as I tweet, take notes, send messages and keep in
contact with friends. With the advancement with technology digital writing has
become more popular. Writing for me in the electronic environment is fun and is
done at ease as I focused less on the act and more on the end result; making
the process less tedious and less frustrating.
Using technology
has made the writing process a lot easier for me as I developed an
understanding of the need to tailor my work. I corrected and changed my work
with ease which encouraged me to see writing as a recursive process. I was able
to read and edit my own work. Additionally, I was not burdened with the thought
of having to rewrite an entire paragraph or story whenever I made a mistake or
when reorganizing my written piece. Instead, with technology and software such
as Microsoft, this is done in a matter of seconds with the click of a button. I
am able to make changes as I go along and make necessary adjustments as my
thoughts continued to flow.
Though there are
many benefits to the use of technology to enhance my writing experience, there
are a few challenges that I also faced. I paid little attention to the cohesion
and coherence of my writing. This is because a lot of the grammatical errors I made
was automatically corrected as I typed using Microsoft. It had helped me to produce grammatically correct
work however, the real underlying problem I had wasn’t given much attention.
Furthermore, I was quite easily distracted from my writing as I would log onto
other sites or use social media.
Using the
traditional pen and paper method of writing has helped me in the internalization
of information and also aided in the remembering process as I was able to
paraphrase and summarize my notes, thus enhancing my note taking skills. My
brain was more actively involved as I produced more ideas and got a better flow
when writing. This is because I was able to slow down and think about what I was
going to write as I was less distracted. Even though this process was time consuming,
I took the time off to plan effectively before writing which helped with the organization
of my writing. I had to ensure that my sentences were grammatically correct
with proper use of punctuation marks and no spelling errors.
Nevertheless, both methods have proven to be
effective in developing my writing experience. There is no doubt that the
digital era is taking over and everyone is progressing towards its uses but I still
revert to using my pen, pencil and paper to construct a plan or outline for my
writing.
