21st Century School Teacher

The Death of English (LOL) by Lily Huang—Newsweek--reports on a British experiment demonstrating that the more adept children were at text messaging, the better they did in spelling and writing.  Interesting information!

Who hasn’t wondered if new communication trends weren’t influencing our language--the correctedness that we so heavily value here in America?  The number of text messages produced annually is staggering—as are the creative spellings combining letters and numbers rearranged to benefit brevity and ease of rapid communication.  Yes, many educators are horrified what may happen to our beloved language and its grammar…  Huang asks, “Will text messaging produce generations of illiterates? Could this—OMG—be the death of the English language?”  I have to LOL!  That threat has always seemed a bit preposterous to me...

She continues, “Those raising the alarm aren't linguists. They're teachers who have had to red-pen some ridiculous practices in high-school papers and concerned citizens who believe it their moral duty to write grammar books.”

I’ll admit to raising an eyebrow over some interesting letter combinations that have come across my desk –but I,  unlike many of the die hard grammarians/English teachers Huang alludes to, try not to panic or get too hung up on what seems to be a somewhat harmless trend in informal writing…

Huang reports about the voice of reason--Britain's most prolific linguist  who tells it as he sees it…

“David Crystal's "Txtng: the Gr8 Db8" (Oxford) makes two general points: that the language of texting is hardly as deviant as people think, and that texting actually makes young people better communicators, not worse.“ Put more simply—our language evolves over time, and the newest trend in communication will likely benefit that evolution… “Where the naysayers see destruction, Crystal sees growth.”

Huang points to one British experiment last year, “children who texted—and who wielded plenty of abbreviations—scored higher on reading and vocabulary tests. In fact, the more adept they were at abbreviating, the better they did in spelling and writing.”  With that said, maybe we  English teachers shouldn’t wield the red pen so vehemently.  I must agree, “The more exposure children get to language, by whatever means, the more verbally skilled they become. " 

We live in exciting times—I’m just starting to get my feet wet with texting, and I must say, the English teacher in me is evident in every complete, punctuated sentence that I text... I wonder how long that will last...

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