BY
Lisa Taylor
As many of you already know, we are in a technological era that is moving ever so fast. It seems like everything is being done by technology now and it seems like conventional things have gone by the waste side. It seems like all the students in my fifth grade class have cell phones and are able to use computers with great mastery. But one thing that has came with these devices is this new way of communicating called Texting/Internet Slang or as I (and other educators I know) call it “The Enemy of the English Language”.
As I began the year, I walked into a fifth grade class where about seventy five percent of the students could barely format a strong paragraph and I could not understand their written thoughts, due to what I have called “creative spelling”. Perplexed at the situation that my students were having trouble spelling and reading simple words such as “there” and “because” and I knew that the teachers that taught them previously did not just let these spelling errors go unnoticed, I knew I had to find the root to this evil.
Then I began to really analyze their work and was seeing that some of the texting/internet slang that I was using to communicate with my own friends showing up in their writing. Then I kindly asked one my students to see their cell phone and saw that they were able to carry on an entire conversation without using any conventional English in the conversation, and the funny thing is that it made sense to them. I saw many OMGs, LOLs, and L8Rs and some that I did not even know. But the students were perfectly comfortable with it and it was this type of slang that was showing up in their writing. Furthermore, it was hard
for them to peer edit each other’s writing because they don’t know what things were actually spelled the right way.With this technological era, students have gained faster ways to do things but have sacrificed the ability to communicate with written and orally language in a formal situation. Is the computer helping the problem or making a big problem worse? Besides I have never seen text/ internet slang on any standardized tests. I know that OMG means “oh my god” and LOL means “laugh out loud” but I also know certain spelling rules like “i before e except after c” and that when writing for school I should use “you” instead of “u” (like it is used in text messages). That’s simply because I was taught how to use these things in writing before learning this "techy" language and now it’s the other way around. Society wants children to learn how to use a computer and other electronic devices before they learn how to read and write their names but never take into account the impact later or what is going to happen when the computer crashes. The children won't be able to survive! I think that writing will never go out of “style” and good writing will be needed later when technology is just a thing of the past!
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Internet_slang - List of Text/Internet Slang
I agree with your analysis of the current issues concerning our youth and writing. Students spend many hours texting their friends via their cell phones or engaged in simple chats on facebook, myspace, and other networking sites. They have removed the fundamentals of the English language that held such importance in primary school. The goal was to teach these fundamentals early on and reinforce them throughout the years - so that they could be successful, functioning, and literate citizens as adults. It's important that our children understand when to turn the slang on and off. They must be able to maintain good writing skills in order to be more competitive when applying for jobs, completing applications, writing resumes or letters of intent for colleges. Without good writing skills they will continue to put themselves at a disadvantage. It may take them longer to respond to their friends online or through their cell, but practicing spelling out each word...or at least most words will help them in the long run! S. Watkins
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment of the situation. As a 6th Grade Language Arts teacher I experienced the same setbacks when correcting my students' work. When they would receive their papers back, they often would question why did I make the corrections that I did. I informed them that "texting" language should not be used when writing work. Our kids are at a real disadvantage with the "technological" age.
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