Re: Shouda dun less text messaging
- From: Harvey Van Sickle <harvey.news@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:26:07 GMT
On 17 Sep 2005, Josh Norther wrote
> There is a rather interesting article in 'The Daily Telegraph'
> (by Liz Lightfoot) today about teens making "basic mistakes in
> grammar" and littering "essays with slang and text message
> abbreviations in this year's GCSE English papers".
>
> The article can be seen at:
>
> http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/17/ns
> pel17.xml
>
> or: http://tinyurl.com/aez7l
>
> What I found particularly interesting is that the report
> mentions the frequent use of the "language of text messaging"
> in particular:
>
> "The board said that examiners were concerned about
> the inability of some candidates to distinguish
> between language appropriate to informal text
> messages or e-mails and that required in more
> formal contexts."
>
> How big a problem, in the opinion of AUEers, does that
> inability (to distinguish) potentially present?
>
If it's as widespread as that article implies -- one has to be careful
when dealing with the annual "we're turning out illiterates" articles -
-- then yes, it's potentially serious to the individuals. (If someone
drafts a business letter that starts with the salutation "Yo", and
closes with "cya", they're going to have one or two job prospects
problems.)
That said, the ability of teenagers to pick up on the need to switch
between formal and informal voice is often underestimated. I'm not
minimising the failure of learning or teaching -- a sense of
appropriateness should certainly have been picked up by the age of
taking GCSEs -- but I figure most of them will learn it pretty quickly
once they're out of school.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years)
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
.
- References:
- Shouda dun less text messaging
- From: Josh Norther
- Shouda dun less text messaging
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