SUNBURY — Parents, ?4U. r u afraid ur teen can’t write? Chill, Valley English teachers say.
Despite parental fears that those e-mails and texts they receive from their kids, filled with abbreviations, incoherent acronyms and run-on sentences, may signal the end of the formal English language as we know it, Valley English teachers, and now a study, indicate kids are doing just fine.
“What I find is, if you establish what you expect from them in your class, they will meet those expectations,” Selinsgrove Area High School English teacher Harvey Edwards said.
Lewisburg language arts teacher Diane Pauling felt the same.
“When they’re putting together a definite writing assignment they know they’re getting graded on, they don’t make those casual mistakes,” Pauling said.
Well, usually.
Edwards and Pauling admit they occasionally come across a “u” when the word “you” is called for, or a “4” when the word “for” is necessary, but they say those mistakes are uncommon.
“I constantly remind them that this is not texting, this is not IMing,” Mifflinburg Area High School English teacher Dru Aumiller said. “I give them examples and just remind them constantly that this is a formal setting, the same type of setting they will have on a job where they will be expected to communicate with a wide variety of people instead of their own generation.”
A study published recently in the journal “Reading and Writing” found that regularly using chatspeak — those abbreviations parents can’t figure out in their kids’ text messages — doesn’t automatically make teens bad spellers.
This is a concern for many parents, who upon receiving e-mails and text messages from their children wonder if they’ve forgotten their grammar lessons altogether.
In the study, chatspeak was analyzed from about 40 students ages 12 to 17. The teens were asked to take a standard spelling test. The Canadian researchers didn’t find much evidence that using abbreviated words, shortcuts, word combinations, letters and numbers or even phonetic spellings was connected with bad spelling.
This, Pauling said, is because most kids recognize and embrace the differences between the audiences they are writing for, whether it’s a report for a teacher or a text message to their mom.
“I think it might be ungrammatical in their own personal text messages, but I think when they transfer to a different type of writing for a different purpose, they know the rules to put back in,” she said.
The same goes for adults, who Edwards pointed out are guilty of the same casual writing styles kids use.
As an example, Edwards said the note he received from an office secretary for this story abbreviated The Daily Item to DI and contained misspelled grammar, whereas an e-mail he received on the same topic from the same secretary was grammatically correct, indicating to Edwards that when it came to a handwritten note, grammar went out the window, but an e-mail signaled a more business-like tone.
“Kids are an easier target because they are in school and they should know better,” Edwards said. “Well, they’re adults, and they should know better.”
There is a bright side, Pauling and Aumiller said, when it comes to all of this digital communication — at least kids are communicating, perhaps not through formal letters as in days past, but through e-mails and blogs.
“Everything is in its own place,” Pauling said. “Really, it’s an opportunity to teach the difference between informal and formal communication.”
Edwards, Aumiller and Pauling all agreed that as teachers, the impetus is on them to make sure their students tow the line.
“They can do whatever you set the bar for them to do at whatever height,” Edwards said. “They are capable of exceeding those expectations. You just have to keep them to that and set that bar high.”
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