Is chatspeak destorying English?
I would say no. English like all languages are ever evolving changing with the times. I don’t believe that it has an impact on students being able to communicate effectively when they need to. If anything it is encouraging them to write more than they would otherwise. If they didn’t use chatspeak they would just call each other.
“We don’t fear that a Spanish class will diminish a student’s command of English.” It is simply another way of communicating. If a student uses chatspeak in a paper he or she would be marked down unless it was relevant to the paper. The same is true if they had used Spanish in an English paper. “The kids want to see if they can get away with it and, perhaps, help to make a change in something so drily traditional as spelling.” If it is not chatspeak it is just something else that kids will challenge and as far as changing the English language it is tradition. The question becomes why aren’t we changing with the times?
I agree! Every single generation has their version of slang but that doesn't mean that they use that slang in their written assignments at school. If students don't know when it is and isn't appropriate for them to use Chatspeak, we need to teach them. It's just another lesson they will learn throughout school, just like talking to your teacher is different than talking to a friend.
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to disagree with you Luke. I worked in a school where more than half of the written papers that I graded were filled with "chatspeak." I would ask students to go back and read over their papers to remove these errors and still they would hand back papers filled with crap. It was like they couldn't remember what is proper from what isn't. I think we would be doing our students a disservice to not make a strong point that "chatspeak" is totally inappropriate as a formal means of communication. I want my students to succeed and if they cannot write well they will do terribly on SATs, make fools of themselves at work, and have an overall much tougher time in life.
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