On Tuesday I went with a classmate of mine to my middle school to get some surveys from middle schoolers. We also interviewed one teacher, and she is going to do an Internet interview with another teacher.
The survey was about how often middle schoolers use text messaging and IM shortcuts in everyday conversation and writing, and whether they use it in papers and so on. Does it affect their language? Does it affect their writing?
The teacher we interviewed was convinced that the use of texting/IM shortcuts was leading to the disintegration of students' grammar. This is a very common view--almost every teacher we mentioned the project to mentioned something about how "kids these days don't know grammar."
The main assumption is that if you are not exposed to "proper" grammar only then you will internalize improper grammar. But let's look at where we first learn language. The first people we learn language from is our parents. But how do parents talk to their kids? In full-blown adult language with correct grammar usage?
Mother: Johnny, look at my eyes disappearing behind my hands and reappearing again!
Baby: (cooing noises)
Mother: Look! My hands are disappearing and reappearing!
Now how about this conversation.
Mother: Peek-a-boo!!
Baby: Cooing noises.
Mother: (gasp) Peek-a-boo!!
Somehow we internalize full-blown correct grammar from "peek-a-boo" and "gaga gugu." So do you really think "JK" and "LOL" will lead to the disintegration of grammar?
Another thing to think about is that there are many languages that uniformly use shortcuts. Arabic and Hebrew routinely omit vowels. Grade 2 Braille has 198 shortcuts, some of which are single letters for entire words (H for have and K for knowledge and ,F for Father). And Deaf people have been using shortcuts such as "mtg" (meeting) and "ga to sk" (go ahead to stop keying) for TTY communication for years. And yet their grammar isn't deteriorating.
Something to think about.
1 comment:
Haha you know I'm one of those people who believe using shortcuts that bleed into proper essays is a deterioration of grammar *laughs* shorthand vs. proper shorthand for notes, proper for essays etc. When kids begin to pick that up (the short hand) esp. in conversations with me, Idk <--- I just can't understand all the langola. But yeah haha I guess I ohld the opinion that all that lol u2 come here 2n8 stuff...is a bit much for me. (I choose not to talk to people who type like that) *laughs* me = verbose and old fashioned in the area of grammatical language ;-). Do I think it will mess up the 'language' itself verbally, no, it's what it is on paper that gets me, it's like if people started talking in computer programming language (that would drive me nuts, even if I could understand it in my regular conversations ;-)~).
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