Internet English From Generation Text
from the those-young-folks-today dept
It seems that teachers everywhere are getting annoyed at kids using “internet English” shorthand in their papers (NY Times, etc). They even add things like smileys to help make their points (though, admittedly, I’ve found myself doing the same thing). Interestingly, the students mostly seem upset when they’re called on it, saying that this is the way they communicate, and if teachers don’t like it, it’s just because they’re out of touch. A few teachers are accepting it, and trying to use it to help students to express themselves or to learn about how language evolves. However, most find the trend disturbing.
Comments on “Internet English From Generation Text”
As they should!
I catch my daughter making spelling and grammar errors in her homework all the time. “But she’s not grading for spelling!” is her response. Personally, I don’t care how low the teacher wants to place the bar. I’m trying to instill the idea into my daughter that if you know how to spell the word correctly, my expectation is that she should do so. If she doesn’t know how to spell it, my expectation is that she will take it upon herself to learn how. I think it is important to maintain high personal standards in our current environment of permissive grammatical sloppiness.
Re: As they should!
true dat
Re: As they should!
Bah.
Language changes over time. It’s not bad, it’s progress. Archaic terms and methods have been dropped in favor of modern terms and methods. We’ve had more progress in the last 50 years than in the last 500, so the change in the form of language is to be expected.
Trying to stifle that is futile, and the best you can do is try to codify it as it evolves, and control it.
Re: Re: As they should!
Yes, language changes. Words come into favor, have their connotations change, etc. But spelling is spelling, and correct usage is correct usage. Loose != lose. Moot != mute. Two != to != too. IMHO, if you don’t want to be taken seriously, by all means construct a sentence like “I thought I was going to loose the game to, but that final goal made that idea mute.”
Re: Re: Re: As they should!
I actually wonder who on this board is of the correct generation to really know what English Shortform, as most peeps( :-P! people) my age call it, really is.
It’s not that we don’t spell. Spelling is spelling. And with words that it actually matters and you can’t tell which form of the word (ex: two, too, to) you meant to use then well yeah, we are suppose to use the right one. But normally just this is a way of typing faster and still being understood.
take the sentance that 2Lazy2Register used, “I thought I was going to loose the game to, but that final goal made that idea mute”
Here’s how most of my friends and I would say the same thing “i thought i was gonna lose that game 2 but that goal, that BlahBlahBlah made totally saved it.”
That first sentance is much to formal writing to be anything that we would ever say to our friends. And notice the complete lack of capitalization. In ESF, we rarely ever use that or punctuation, though that depends more on the person than the rule. And the sentance of course. Sometimes it really needs it so we use it.
I personally believe that teachers shouldn’t accept this form of writing for papers. It’s not about changing language. It’s about the form of Formal writing. This stuff is informal, papers are Formal. Perhaps English is simply making it’s own distinction of Formal Speach and Informal Speach like most other languages, like German and Japanese.
I am a Language Major and very intimate with many languages and less so with others but I feel I have a good grasp on what they all entail. Suffice to say English is the only one that I have come across without a true difference between their Formal and Informal Forms.
Re: Re: Re:2 As they should!
You are SUPPOSED to use the right word! The SENTENCE may be much too formal, but written word will always be more formal than SPEECH and is constrained by the fact that written word can’t carry as much information as SPEECH, since SPEECH also carries information beyond words. Not having studied lots of languages, I’m afraid that I don’t know much about ITS formal and informal forms when compared to other languages, but I suspect that spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are good things. Neatness counts.