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...