Text messaging invades English schools!

[Striker]

Just wanted to share this article from CNN.com. I don't know if it's true or not though.

What's funny is that I'm a TA in college and last semester I had a student who would regularly email me questions regarding class assignments. The emails looked very similar to what's in the article. It would take me a few minutes just to figure out what each sentence was supposed to be.

I don't know what's worse. This short-hand or l33t 5p34k. And Elric doesn't get to vote ;)


Monday, March 3, 2003 Posted: 10:17 AM EST (1517 GMT)
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LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An English essay written by a British teenager in text messaging short-hand has reignited concern among teachers that literacy standards are under threat.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Monday that the 13-year-old's teacher could not decipher what the youngster had written.

"I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate," the teacher told the newspaper.

The girl's essay began: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."

Which in translation from text messaging shorthand would read: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It's a great place."

Judith Gillespie, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, told the newspaper a decline in grammar and written English was partly linked to the text messaging craze.

"Pupils think orally and write phonetically," she said.

[Vash]

LOLOLOLOL gr8 R-T-cle d00d!!!11 So funny!

[Jonathon Spectre]

The teacher needs to give her a zero and explain that he doesn't accept alien languages on essays and that stupidly abbreviated garbage doesn't cut it on job applications either.

This works perfectly on my students; I haven't had an indecipherable mess since the first paper of the year. First paper of next year I'll see it again. But only once...

G2G LYL BFF!

JS

[Mithrandir]

This one hits pretty close to home for me since my little brother just recently got into the AIM-craze - the latest fad at his middle school (along with "50 Cent"... I am seriously beginning to contemplate breaking that godawful CD).

The way he spells and communicates in general while using that vile program is just completely mind-boggling to me. All caps, spelling "call" as "kall", "g2g", "lollys" (haven't even begun to decipher that one yet), and so on. I don't know if it has affected his English grade in school or not, but at the middle school level, it's rarely challenging enough that it would seem to matter.

(All I have to say is, thank God I went to a private school that beat me into shape academically... I still have nightmares of how underprepared public schools made me for a private high school my Freshman year :) )

Then again, I was never into the whole "instant messaging" wackiness. I currently have 11 people on my AIM list (6 of which are duplicates, same people just different screen names) and only log onto it when I accidently click on it. My brother, on the other hand, is complaining about the 200 buddy limit and has only had it for a month... *shudder*

Anyhoo, I'm straying from the point. The problem is not just solely the instant messaging programs, but rather, that these schools are not instilling the proper foundations in spelling, grammar, and the English language early in these childrens lives.

"Colloquialisms" will always develop, but since these young kids don't have the proper foundations, they don't stay in the vernacular and rather become the English language itself to these kids. They begin to think that "g2g" is something that's okay to say all the time and not just when you're with friends.

Schools are often the ones complaining about AIM, ICQ, etc. but they're a big reason it's having such a negative impact upon grammar and spelling and they just don't seem to see that. Or perhaps they don't want to.

[--Pete]

Hi,

They begin to think that "g2g" is something that's okay to say all the time and not just when you're with friends.

But that's not a real problem. People are capable of having more than one language. And of knowing when a given language is appropriate. Simply a matter of the schools saying, in effect, "Use any language you want to use outside of school hours. But not during school hours. While you are here, you will conform to *our* standards."

Jonathon Spectre has the right of it.

--Pete

[WarBlade]

"Colloquialisms" will always develop, but since these young kids don't have the proper foundations, they don't stay in the vernacular and rather become the English language itself to these kids. They begin to think that "g2g" is something that's okay to say all the time and not just when you're with friends.

Hehe. So true. :D

Last I went back into doing the student thing for a bit and a couple of the guys in about a 17, 18 age bracket decided they wanted access to the tutor's PC to set up their Counterstrike server over the class LAN while the tutor was away.

Sam: "Can you get into this thing?"
Me: "No"
Sam: "But you're a 'leet hack-sor'!"
Me: ". . ."

He talked like that constantly. It seemed much of his spoken English was derived from what he read on screen.

[whyBish]

Reminds me of my English teacher telling me of her experience in First year classics at university and finding out about the pronunciation of the Greek gods/heros was nothing like she had imagined all those years.

[yangman]

People are capable of having more than one language.

And how!

Being Chinese-Canadian with a Japanese background, I have many friends who are at least bilingual.
Some think deciphering English IM abbreviations is hard, but try having that mixed with another language!

You should hear the conversasions I have at home though: Chinese plus Japanese with my parents, badly pernounced Chinese and English from my brother, and the occasional computer/electronic jargon with my father. It gets even more fun at the dinner table where it's not unusual to have all of that going on at the same time. :P

[[wcip]Angel]

Hehe. So true. :D

Last I went back into doing the student thing for a bit and a couple of the guys in about a 17, 18 age bracket decided they wanted access to the tutor's PC to set up their Counterstrike server over the class LAN while the tutor was away.

Sam: "Can you get into this thing?"
Me: "No"
Sam: "But you're a 'leet hack-sor'!"
Me: ". . ."

He talked like that constantly. It seemed much of his spoken English was derived from what he read on screen.

What did you do with the body? I've started to realise that it puts a terrible strain on my back to dig a hole each time.. nowadays, I just take the person into an alley and leave the body there.. it's so much easier.. Sure, you have to get home without people seeing the blood on your clothes, but if you go at night, that shouldn't be a problem..

[cheezz]

....Considering how badly the vast majority of the English butcher their own language. Pronunciation-wise, that is. That said, I also agree with Jonathon Spectre.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Those teachers have no room to talk....

Have you ever read (or, rather, tried to read) a paper written in educationalese? Now there's a bastardization of language if there ever was one. Much like modern art, it divides people into three classes: the practitioners that enjoy making fools of their fellows, the followers who mistakingly think they understand the message, and the cluefull that look at the whole process in askance. ;)

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

The clueful look at the whole process askance? They look askance at the whole process? Or do they merely shake their pates is disbelief that the literati are as guilty as The Great Unwashed in adding confusion to general discourse. :)

The beauty of usage is that it is an arcane combination of art and science that evolves over time. Am I doing well, or am I doing good? I have always enjoyed Safire's commentary on that process, as well as Bill Bryson's books that deal with The Mother Tongue, what with his Notes from a Small Island and his revelations of what elements of the English language is Made in America. :)

I then look at the process of the current growth of Newspeak, the proclamations of the pundits from Minitrue, and the agenda of the PC thought police, and frequently pause to wonder if George Orwell wasn't a bit more of a prophet than we'd care to admit.

As for the suitability of slang in school? A zero on that paper is generous, however, in America, I suspect the student would have been given at least 5 points for having spelled his own name correctly. *snorts*

[cheezz]

Ah, yes. To know, to wish to know, and to know how to bluff. I prefer to use whichever choice helps my current situation. ;) Office politics being what they are these days, any of those three choices can work against you.

[pakman]

I sent an email to a TA and this is what I got back:

"yes u contacted the right person. and i will be ur grader for cs156. but since
ITAP has royally messed things up with drastic changes, i don't know the
answers yet but will get back to you soon."

yes i '|'h||\||< u |-|4v3 a |o0||\|'|'

[--Pete]

Hi,

Forward that e-mail to the professor in charge of the course. If that TA is still a TA in a week, drop the course. If it happens again, find a better school. ;)

--Pete

[AtomicKitKat]

Man, that IS bad. I think we had this debate last year when there was that hullaballoo on slashdot about half-arsed language in school. Back in school, I ALWAYS used the best spelling possible(straight 95% except for words like mischievous, plural of handkerchief, etc) Not surprisingly, I topped the classes in English. :P And the punishment for misspelling words in anything you were assigned for English class was severe. Rewrite the entire sentence 10 times, CORRECTLY. (Mental note, stop using capitalisations to stress things when writing) I'm guessing that with the current prevalence of computers in schools, more students are getting used to typing in short-form(glad my mother taught me to how to type properly at the age of 8), thinking that by saving time typing in short-form, they will also save the reader time since the reader will have less characters to read(also because they are a bunch of .lackadaisical dillweeds who would rather play a game like Counterstrike over a quiet hour of Scrabble :P), not realising that to a person who is not well-versed in this so-called "leet-speak", the entire thing would probably take twice as long to decipher. I believe this was also brought up in the old debate about this topic on the old forums.

[AtomicKitKat]

I forgot to add, if you live in Singapore/Malaysia(like I do), instant messages are a bizzare combination of corrupted colloquail English, Malay, and about 4 different Chinese dialects. Also, what is the deal with adding "Z" after everything, even when no plural exists for the word?

"BYEZ!"
"CYAZ!"
"HIZ!"

*shudder* I am beginning to rethink the drawbacks of physical immortality.

[--Pete]

Hi,

You do have the ability to edit your posts, you know. Makes much better sense than carrying on a conversation with yourself :)

--Pete

[AtomicKitKat]

It's my personal way of showing that I never(95% of the time :P ) need to correct my posts for grammar/spelling errors. Errors of memory are perfectly acceptable because I am:

A) Psychotic.
B) Criminally Insane.
C) Senile.
D) All of the above.

[NiteFox]

It's my personal way of showing that I never(95% of the time :P ) need to correct my posts for grammar/spelling errors. Errors of memory are perfectly acceptable because I am:

A) Psychotic.
B) Criminally Insane.
C) Senile.
D) All of the above.

E) Forgot that a smiley text key corresponds to a popular method of listing options.