Please don't gauge your eyes out - I was just trying to illustrate the talking point of one of the edubloggers I perused the past few days. Specifically, I found Sarah D. Sparks blog post over at Inside School Research to be quite captivating. Specifically, her post concerned itself with how text speak (txt spk?) effects student grammar and - surprise - it does. Indeed, children are texting at astronomical rates. The blog cited research that stated that, on average, teenage boys send about 2,500 texts a month - with girls trumping that by texting 4,000 texts a month.
It's a truly fascinating statistic, but not one that's all that surprising. Mobile phones are perhaps the most oft-used technological medium today - perhaps even moreso than our laptops. We check our emails on it, we can navigate the web smoothly, and of course we communicate greatly via text messaging. No complaints here, of course, because it beats the hell out of calling someone and playing phone tag with them. It is disturbing, though, to think about where exactly we are headed as a society. I honestly only see those statistics increasing as the world becomes more and more integrated with technology. So what does that mean for our classrooms? The evidence of the research clearly shows that students are on a downward trend with their grammar and punctuation based on their frequency of texting. As students inevitably text more in the future, what can we as educators do to help combat the declining rate of...well, non-shitty writing?
Luckily, the blog offers up a few good ideas. For starters, emphasizing and administer writing assignments that differ greatly from their typical texting topics. So more formal, academic assignments are encourage - God help us all if you assign kids to write an opinion piece. You're digging your own grave with one, imaginary person I'm pretending to talk to. Also, by making students more aware of their grammar usage via revisions and examination of their works can help encourage them to be more succinct with their writing skills. Personally, I think there's still a lot of work to be done on the solutions front, but being cognizant of this issue and tackling it head on is a far better strategy than not addressing it and letting the inevitable occur - Our future president in 2033 administering his State of the Union address in 140 characters or less. Tweet tweet.
Sup Hussein, I'll comment on your cool story, bro. You seem to have found a much more interesting article than I did, I think its quite amazing how our society is changing, and for the worse might I add, while technology does have its benefits I think there are far too many negatives to make it something to integrate so much into our daily lives and into our classrooms. Like you said, the effect that texting has on student grammar is atrocious and something that has to be combated. i think you made a good point though, that being aware of the issue at hand is the best first step to make and with enough support and awareness maybe something can be done about it.
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