Letter Writing Influences Literacy

Words With Friends: How Letter Writing Influences Literacy Getting the mail was the best part of the day. The thrill of opening the mailbox door and seeing a letter with your name was both incomparable and indescribable. Writing letters made writing fun. For centuries, letter writing has been a significant form of communication- regardless of social class, age, and gender. In fact, letter writing “remains one of the most pervasive literate activities in human society” to this day (Barton and Hall 1). When looking closely at the foundations of literacy, it is impossible to ignore the influence of letter writing. Not only does writing letters influence a person’s writing, but it changes the way a person looks at writing. Writing suddenly

Creative writing has such a positive connotation because it allows for passionate and expressive communication of ideas, and grammatical correctness does not inhibit this. Emily Strasser, a first year college student, asserts in her paper entitled “Writing What Matters”, that “when students write what matters to them, they write better, more passionately, and more strongly; claiming agency in their expression, they take on the power to affect change in their lives and in the world” (Strasser, 204). After examining the results gathered from our survey, it is clear that writing letters inspires people to write in a similar manner- more informal, yet expressive and filled with what matters to

From the survey we conducted we are able to conclude that most people enjoy writing and writing letters improved their view of writing in general. These survey respondents considered their letter writing to be mostly informal, but still valued it as fun and believed it influenced their literacy. This exemplifies the idea that even informal writing can positively contribute to a person’s literacy. Emily Strasser’s work also assisted in showing that letter writing is a creative activity that can improve communication abilities and provide a valuable means of expression. The fact that informal letter writing is not bound by traditional grammatical rules gives the opportunity for unlimited creativity to express what is important to a writer. Patricia Austin’s work also helped show how things like letter writing can benefit people by connecting them and encouraging positive relationships between people of different ages, genders, social statuses, and races. The Barksdale reading helps to show that the creative writing in letters does not have to be limited to letter writing and informal writing, but can also be used to improve communication and critical thinking in academic writing if writers allow their writing skills to transfer. Overall, our study and resources show that most people see the value of letter