Young People's Writing: Attitudes, Behaviour and the Role of Technology

Writing is an important issue in the UK today. While children's and young people's writing standards steadily improved until 2006, levels have not increased in recent years. Writing is much more than just an educational issue--it is an essential skill that allows people to participate fully in today's society and to contribute to the economy. Since relatively little is known about young people's views about writing in the UK, the key objectives of this survey were: to explore how much young people enjoy writing, what type of writing they engage in, how good at writing they think they are and what they think about writing. This research provides everyone with an up-to-date insight into young people's attitudes towards writing. Most young people write regularly and young people write technology-based materials, such as text and instant messages, most frequently. While owning a mobile phone does not appear to alter young people's writing behaviour, having a profile on a social networking site or having a blog is connected to enjoyment of writing and confidence in writing. Young people today use computers regularly and believe that computers are beneficial to their writing. Appended are: (1) Writing attitudes questionnaire; (2) Technology and young people's background characteristics; (3) Reasons for writing ability by demographic background; and (4) Writing frequency of 18 types of format for whole sample. (Contains 13 tables and 8 figures.) [This paper was created in collaboration with Booktrust.]