Title:
Students' Writing and the Web: Motivator or OMG?
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Web browsers first appeared on computers in the
early nineteen nineties. Since then, the Internet
has greatly changed the way people communicate. But
some teachers think the changes are not all for the
better.
Eleanor Johnson is an English professor at Columbia
University in New York City.
Professor Johnson says she thinks text messaging has
made students believe that it is acceptable to make
bad spelling and grammatical errors.
She says her students have increasingly used less
formal English in their writing. She says words and
phrases like "guy" and "you know" now appear in
research papers.
And now she has to talk about another problem in
class -- incorrect word use. For example, a student
uses "preclude" instead of "precede" when talking
about one event coming before another. Preclude
sounds like precede but it means prevent.
Professor Johnson suspects a strong link between the
rise of instant and casual communication online and
an increase in writing mistakes.
But she admits there may not be much scientific
evidence, at least not yet.
David Crystal is a British linguist who has written
more than one hundred books, including the book
"Language and the Internet." He says the actively
changing nature of the Internet makes it difficult
to stay current in studying its effects. But he
believes its influence on language is small.
He says the main effect of the Internet on language
has been to increase the expressive richness of
language.
Erin Jansen is founder of Netlingo, an online
dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms. She
says the new technology has not changed existing
language but has greatly added to the vocabulary.
"Basically it's a freedom of expression," she says.
And what about teachers who find these new kinds of
mistakes in spelling and grammar in their students'
work. What is her message to them?
Ms. Jansen says she tells them not to get angry or
upset, but to get creative. Teachers and educators
want to get children to communicate.
But Erin Jansen and David Crystal agree with Eleanor
Johnson on at least one thing. Teachers need to make
sure students understand the rules of language.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report.
We want to know what you have to say about the
effects of the Internet on language and writing.
Post your comments at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
