OMG, ur English is Gr8: The Effect of Text Lingo on the English Language in Classrooms

     Texting has become a popular activity for teenagers throughout their daily lives. It has become the norm to receive a cell phone once you are a teenager, and the age when kids are given cell phones gets younger and younger as times goes by. Adolescents use their cell phones for a lot more than just making phone calls though; they now communicate via text message. Texting has become one of ways to join the in-crowd, and most of the youths who text often let their cell phones control their lives just as society controls them in pressuring them to text their friends.

     Texting has become a new form of communication for adolescents. It is simpler for many to type out abbreviated words and shorthand in order to tell someone a message than to call them up because they don’t have to go through the routine of starting and ending the conversation. However, this evolution of communication is starting to affect more than just the mode in which messages are transferred. Texting has become so popular that it is beginning to show up in schoolwork all over. Some people believe that this is harming the English language, but others find it to be just a change of the times as the English language is constantly evolving. No matter the stance taken on this issue though, it can be agreed upon that text lingo is beginning to affect the English language in classrooms all over.

     The majority of those people who believe that texting is ruining the English language are educators who have grown tired of getting out their red pens to mark every word in an essay that isn’t actually in the English language. Teachers in Charleston, West Virginia are concerned that textual language, and other electronic languages, will soon take over regular English writing, especially when it comes to cursive. Cheryl Jeffers, an education professor at Marshall University says of the situation, “Text messaging, e-mail, and word processing have replaced handwriting outside the classroom”, and she worries that handwriting will continue to be misplaced as the years go by (Breen). Others see that this could just be some of the same old hysteria that has been heard before. Kathleen Wright works for an education materials company named Zaner-Bloser where she is the national product manager for handwriting. She believes that the text message craze is similar to the time in which typewriters first came out because people said the same things about them. They believed the typewriters would change how people communicated permanently, but in the end the English language didn’t change that much (Breen).

     Still, there are those people that bring up the debate that texting is making it hard for teachers to understand the students’ language in their work, and this in turn is affecting the grammar and spelling of the students’ language. A study by the United Kingdom’s Telegraph showed that 4 out of 10 teachers couldn’t understand their students’ work because of the lingo, and 55 percent of a group of 500 surveyed teachers said that they could see that their students’ grammar was getting worse due to all the text lingo that was used (Paton). This follows some of the same steps that author and educator, Paul Jury has come up with when it comes to this topic.

     Jury came up with five steps to decide whether texting is ruining or changing our language. He says that new words are being created, an extra space has been deleted after sentences, hyphens are vanishing from between words, students are learning to be more concise, and there are errors in spelling, reading, and writing (Jury). Some of these steps happen to fall into the side that texting is ruining our language, but others show how the language is changing for the better. When it comes to ruining the language, Jury sees the elimination of a space after sentences and the disappearance of hyphens as a knock at the language that once was. He says it’s not that big of a deal, but he always learned that there were to be two spaces after a sentence. Now that texting has caused people to write quickly with a limited number of characters this rule has gone by the wayside (Jury). When it comes to the hyphen issue he says, “Nearly 16,000 thousand words have been stripped of their hyphens in recent dictionary versions: leap-frog has become leapfrog, make-over has become makeover, and post-modern has become postmodern, all because people are too lazy to reach for that one extra key” (Jury). He worries that this is going to change the historical significance of the English language into a language similar to Swedish as longer words are put together (Jury).

     He also has issues with spelling and grammar, but they can be borderline on the language ruined/language changing debate. He states, “I will still say I think texting does have a slightly negative effect, on spelling at least (if for no other reason than the nonincentive it provides to practice spelling words correctly, especially advanced words). And some words get spelled wrong so often (tonite/tonight) in texting that students really are starting to lose track of which way is correct” (Jury). Jury believes that just because an adolescent spells a word in a shortened version with textual language, it doesn’t mean that he couldn’t spell the word if he had too. However, he also believes that since the shortening of words is happening so much it is quite possible that over time the students forget how to spell the words correctly because they have been so used to shortening them. A study by the British Academy would disagree with this point as they found that “more sophisticated literacy skills are needed for textism use” (Turnbull). Therefore, the students have to know how to spell and read the word in order to know how to shorten it for texting. When it comes to grammar, Jury believes that students are either going to be do well with grammar or poorly depending on what they have learned; he doesn’t think cell phone texting affects that at all (Jury).

     Jury believes that the language is forever changing though when it comes to new words and brevity. He compares the text lingo of LOL and OMG to that of all the new words that Shakespeare and Webster brought into the English language. He says, “New technology spawns new words, just like all new culture does. But to argue that this is a bad thing is to deny the very flexibility that makes language useful” (Jury). Therefore, he is arguing in the simplest matter that any type of new word added to a language can be useful because it adds to the diversity of the language and the options speakers have to choose various words. One of Britain’s leading linguists, David Crystal, would agree with Jury on this point. He says, “Shakespeare freely used elisions, novel syntax and several thousand made-up words (his own name was signed in six different ways). Even some common conventions are relatively newfangled: rules for using the oft-abused apostrophe were set only in the middle of the 19th century. The point is that tailored text predates the text message, so we might as well accept that ours is a language of vandals” (Huang). Crystal is saying that language has always been changed by the people using it, so we should just accept it as a commonplace occurrence. He believes that all change in language is gradual, but in the end there will be a monumental development to how we speak and communicate(Huang).

     When it comes to brevity Jury describes how many of the text messaging programs only allow a certain number of characters in their boxes as a limit, so students are learning to become more concise when it comes to writing essays because they are used to having to cut words out to fill a small space (Jury). Many scholars in the field would agree with him on this, as more and more people are beginning to take the side of the evolving language in this debate.

     Many people now see that texting is actually helping students better understand the English language. This may be surprising to some, but different research has shown that language learners are better at spelling, grammar, and learning the language when they are also chronic texters. The British Academy in the United Kingdom found that in doing research with kids age eight to twelve, texting helps them a lot with, “phonological awareness…a child’s ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of sound in speech” (Tumbull). Basically, this argues for the fact, against Jury’s belief, that texting helps learners get down to the root of the language. Since the language is short and concise and the students are around it all the time, they have the extra time to work with it, and this in turn helps them out with their language skills in general. This is also illustrated in Newsweek writer Lily Huang’ article titled The Death of English (LOL). In this article she talks about a new book by David Crystal titled Txtng: the Gr8 Db8. The book looks at how texting is making people better communicators because they are able to go to the root of the language. Huang says, “Far from being a means to getting around literacy, texting seems to give literacy a boost. The effect is similar to what happens when parents yak away to infants or read to toddlers: the more exposure children get to language, by whatever means, the more verbally skilled they become” (Huang). Therefore, she sides with Crystal in believing that texting actually helps students better understand the language because some exposure to it through texting is better than no exposure at all. Crystal also believes that the effects that others have seen in their classrooms due to the high amount of students who text is only just a minor change in the English language. Crystal uses examples from the past to show that language it forever changing. He states that more of the language was changed due to British influence during the Revolutionary War and other times in history than what is occurring now with texting (Huang).

     Crystal believes that the language is always going to change and over time new additions will keep being added to it. Although many other people have debated that the text lingo that shows up in papers is harming the way their students’ write and use the language, all and all Crystal sees that any use of the language can be beneficial for the students in the long run.

     When looking at this topic, it seems to be that people are all over the board when it comes to opinions. Many believe that the textual language that shows up in papers is a hindrance on the language because they see how their students can’t even write a basic essay without using abbreviations of words. However, others take the middle ground and are able to see that certain aspects of the texting lifestyle can impede the use of proper English, but they can also appreciate the fact that this new form of communication is adding so many interesting pieces to the English language. Moreover, others believe the latter part of this in full because they see the diversity brought to the English language from text lingo and are able to appreciate that this form of communicating is helping language learners at spelling and grammar because they’re able to get down to the root of the word. All in all, this debate on whether text lingo in classrooms is ruining the English language or helping it evolve is never going to stop. It really is a matter of opinion, but when one stops to think about all the students concentrating on texting their friends and then putting those similar shortened words into essays for a grade, it is easy to see that texting definitely has affected the way the English language is used in the school system, whether that be for bad or for good. 

Works Cited

• Breen, Tom. “Cursive May be a Fading Skill, but so What?” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 19 September 2009. Web. 9 November 2010
• Huang, Lily. “The Death of English (LOL).” Newsweek. 8 August 2008. Web. 9 November 2010. 
• Jury, Paul. “5 Ways Texting Is Ruining Changing English.” The Huffington Post. 23 July 2010. Web. 9 November 2010.
• Paton, Grame. “Text Message Slang Found in School Work.” The Telegraph. 12 December 2008. Web. 9 November 2010.
• Turnbull, Kaite. “LITER8 LRNRS: Is Texting Valuable or Vandalism?” British Academy. 2009. Web. 9 November 2010.

I Found My Future Through the Eyes of Holden Caulfield

     Life has been an ever-growing and changing process for me, but not until I spent some time at The University of Findlay did I finally realize who I would [be] in the future. I transferred to Findlay after one semester at The University of Toledo and started taking classes in the physician assistant program. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted a career that involved helping others, but I hadn’t quite figured out the right fit yet.  I started working at Washington Intermediate’s after school program, helping students read, and attending The University of Findlay Ohio Student Education Association (UFOSEA) meetings with my sister even though I wasn’t in the College of Education, and after helping Findlay’s youth one-on-one and experiencing the family-like atmosphere among all the students and faculty in the COE, I knew I was home.

     After one semester at Findlay, I got out of the physician assistant program and declared my major as Adolescent-Young Adult Language Arts/English and English-Teaching Emphasis. I was put into the classroom right away with the Van Buren LAMP program, and every consecutive year I learned more and more about the field of education.

     It felt unreal that I was actually going to be a high school English teacher, following the footsteps of my mother, until I had my junior block experience at Van Buren High School. There was a student named "Damien" in one of my classes who turned himself off when it came to learning. Nothing seemed to interest him, and his motivation and grades reflected that. Before I even started teaching my classes, I began to talk with him and encourage him to do his work in ways that would interest him. I found out that he really enjoyed military events and history, so I suggested books for him to read and gave him ideas to write about for a short story project the class was working on. I also encouraged him to read leisurely whenever he had his work completed. This turned out to have a larger effect than I imagined.

     That year Van Buren was having a book tournament in which books would be matched up against each other; students would read the books, pick the best one, and move on to the next match. By the end of the year, the favorite book of the students would be picked out. Students were asked to volunteer to be in this program and provide money to purchase copies of the books. When the day came to sign up for the program, it came to my surprise that "Damien" was the first student to sign up to be in the reading program. When I started my experience, he wasn’t interested in anything related to English, but through my encouragement he began to enjoy the wonderful world of reading.

     I have been able to share my passion for reading inside and outside of the classroom, and this brings me joy because this passion has been growing for quite a long time. My Grandpa and Grandma Midtgard were the first two people to really encourage me to pick up a book. My parents both had busy schedules during my youth, so my grandparents would watch my sister and me during the daytime. Each day they came, they’d have a brand new book for each of us. When we were really young, they would read to us, and as the days went by, we finally grew into reading to them.  Little did I know that this would be the foundation for my reading addiction today, where I have a two thousand book private library.
     When I look back through the years, there was hardly ever a time when I didn’t have a book in my hands. To this day, I still use dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other books of information to look information up. There is something about actually holding a book, smelling a book, and connecting with a book that makes the whole reading experience worthwhile. My grandparents’ teaching me how to read, has led to my passion to teach others how powerful and intoxicating of an experience reading can be for them.

     My love for reading sprung up again this past semester with my analytical writing class.  We were asked to complete in-depth research projects centered on our future careers. At this point in time I knew that I loved reading and teaching, but I hadn’t put the two ideas together yet. The day I thought that I might be able to include reading in this project, I decided that this paper would be the decider on whether or not I would want to concentrate on literacy and reading as an aspect of my future career. My paper was titled “’One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish’ to ‘Lord of the Rings’: The Importance of Parental Involvement in Regards to Reading with Their Adolescent Children.”  Research had shown that children’s love for reading tended to dim around grades four or five, and this happened to be the time in which most parents stopped reading with their children. Therefore, I suggested that parents’ continuous support in their children’s reading lives would encourage the students to stay motivated and passionate about reading.
     After typing up this report, I knew that this was definitely the field for me.  I worked on this research project throughout the whole semester bringing in my knowledge of the DIBELS, MASI, and various other assessments that I’ve conducted in the past. I interviewed literacy scholars in the field, and I developed a plan to put my theories into practice. After presenting my findings to a field of colleagues, my professor said that my ideas were very credible and that I had encouraged her to work more with her teenage son when it comes to reading. This comment, along with all my interesting findings, encouraged me to go back to my roots and bring my passion for reading into my future career.

     I would like to get a master of arts in education with a concentration on reading. With this degree, I would have even more knowledge on how to connect with my students and encourage them to read. After teaching high school English for many years, I would like to become a reading specialist, and, finally, a college professor. My life has been ever-growing and changing, but when I have stopped to reflect, two things have stayed constant: reading and teaching. Reading and teaching have been involved in every facet of my life, and I would like to see that continue in the future.
     I decided to go into teaching so I could share my passion for reading with the youth of this nation. Oddly enough, a classic American literature book, The Catcher in the Rye, encouraged me to do this. In the novel, the main character Holden Caulfield states this, “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."  I couldn’t have spoken these words better myself. I look at all of the students I’m going to encounter in the future in this way. They’re all playing on the cliff and struggling in their own way near the edge. I want to be there to provide a helping hand along the way. It is my goal to not let any student near the edge of the cliff. If I can share my passion for reading and learning with them, and if I can connect to them in way that is individualized for them, then I know I can be a catcher in the rye, and that is a part of my life, along with reading and teaching, that is never going to change.