Slashdot Mirror
"L33T" Speak Invades Schools
Masem writes "NYTimes reports on how common chat room/IM shortcuts (such as 'u' for you, 'r' for are, etc) are creeping into the classroom and homework assignments from those teenage kids that spend a significant amount of time in chat programs. This is giving the teachers headaches in trying to grade the assignments, much less understand them because of the techno-generation gap, and to try to prevent further abuse of the language, have begun penalizing students for using the net slang. Students sometimes don't even realize they use the chat room shorthand until it's pointed out to them, because that method of chatting has become second nature to them."
This is, at best, a cop out. When I was younger, I ran home everyday and got on BBS's. I used kewl, l8r, btw, etc, day in, day out. If these kids can't figure it out or they 'forget' (don't spell checkers catch this stuff?), too bad for them. I feel for the teachers who have to grade 100 papers and mark down for spelling cool with a k, but I would stand behind any teacher who did so.
--trb
A friend of mine, Rayner, who works at a University in England has also received a job application from an undergraduate that contained 'L33T' speak (well, Mobile Phone abbreviations). Think about it, this person had already GOT TO UNIVERSITY!
Needless to say he told them to rewrite it (after getting a copy).
same story, different decade...
the world was going to go to hell in a handbasket when:
* kids started using calculators instead of slide rules
* kids started typing homework on PCs with spell checkers
* kids started using the 'net as their research source, rather than the library
really, now. it's an interesting sign of the times, but then again, there have always been kids who've used the vernacular in their writing, whether it be poor grammar, slang, or whatnot.
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
I didn't realize capitalization was considered obsolete either. Man, do I feel old...
The other night we had to go to a parents' meeting at our sons' school.
At the end we were all milling around, and their teacher and I started chatting about the boys. She told me she appreciated how polite they were to each other, to her, and to the other students--among other standard teacher complements.
Soon she complement my wife and me on our parenting skills by saying, "You and Chris are doing a good job as parents. So props to you."
I thought for awhile on why someone wouldn't be able to realize they're typing this cyber-shorthand and the only thing I could think of was laziness. I mean, I personally couldn't see how on earth u could b substituting words without noticing it.
But then it hit me. It isn't laziness, but the lack of any real typing skills. Shorthand is simply a result of trying to be more efficient in transmitting your thoughts. Repetition of anything will develop into normal practice. This is evident in the ubiquitous and pervasive slang we have.
For me, I've been essentially a touch-typist since about the 9th grade and it only takes me a few hundredths of a second more to type YOU instead of U. My girlfriend however is a one-handed hunt and peck type. She also uses every short-hand substitute I've ever seen.
Perhaps it should become a requirement to teach kids to touch-type at an earlier age. This would not only facilitate more productive computer use but should also help foster proper language use by obviating the need for this type of shorthand.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
. . . the reactions to this here. I've always seen 'l33t' speak as something akin to "Ebonics" - a form that's quite valid in it's own context, but that doesn't have a place in school in general, and English class in particular. Netspeak is, at best, a dialect. One that takes an exclusively written form, and is normaly reserved to certain compatible media.
/. I've read are supportive of the teachers is an even better sign.
/. as a bastion against the creeping death of the English language. Scary, is it not?
That teachers are taking a stand and slapping kids down for getting lazy (or stupid!) is a good sign. That most of the comments on
Imagine:
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
This may date me a wee bit, but I received my Amateur Radio License back in 1977, when I was 14. I had my novice ticket, so I was limited to CW (Morse Code) over the air. Since CW is a very slow way to communicate, there are many accepted abbreviations and codes. For example: FB OM NO QRM ON UR SIGNAL W9TACO DE WB3IZT Translation : Fine business old man, there is no natural interference on your signal. Your turn, W9TACO (the other person's Ham call), this is WB3IZT (my call).
I would never had dreamed of writing any school work using "code speak" much less expected to get credit for it. "L33T 5P33K" is the same way -- it may be fine on IM or in chatrooms, but it does not belong on school work.
BTW, I know W9TACO is not a valid call sign...if I need to explain it to you, forget it.
Beware of Sleestak
Language is meant to communicate. If someone can't spell things well enough for the point to get across to the teacher, (which was the point of this article) they deserve to be penalized.
Languages evolve, but that is not their purpose. To some extent, standardization of a language is necessary. Without language standardization, languages split off completely. This isn't necessarily bad if the majority of the population agrees on the changes, but mostly only kids, and a small percentage of them, are using "L33T-sp34k".
Societies don't let children dictate changes to policies. They shouldn't, or we'd be going to war over silly things like candy bars or pathetic insults like "doody-head". We'd have "goo goo, ga ga" become an integral part of our speech. We already have enough trouble with our foolish governments, we don't need more from foolish children.
Just remember that language changes with the time. If not we'd still be talking in Old English. With that said, I'm not supporting what the kids are doing; they need to learn proper grammar and spelling. However, people trying to crack down on l337 speak in all forms should keep in mind that we don't use Shakespear's English anymore.
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -George Bernard Shaw
Yes, language evolve. Yes, slang is an accepted part of casual English. Blah, blah, yakkity, smackitty, bring me a nice, big glass of OJ.
However, in a formal setting - and by formal, I mean the workplace, any education setting (As a teacher, or as a student), or the media (newspaper, magazines, etc.), a standard basic form of the language is necessary so that the average person can understand what is being said or written.
This means leaving out slang that specific to an activity, ethnic group or region. (IE: Netspeak, ebonics, or southern "American"). It also includes spelling, grammer and basic editing for clarity of thought.
-Notes-
*Slashdot is -not- a formal setting, so put that red pen away now and stop correcting my spelling. I don't care enough to hit the spellchecker.
*AVERAGE person. Not "Drooling moron", not "Ignormus who never bothered to pay attention in school.", and not "Non-speaker of the language."
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
If you are using a computer, it isn't hard to type the entire word. Things like r -> are (or possibly our sometimes) don't save any time on a keyboard. Quite often I see abbreviations that work out only 1 character less than the actual word.
The other thing that comes hand in hand with the abbreviations are the lack of punctuation, capitals, or grammer. I have had entire e-mails with no capitals or full stops. It takes a long time to work out what is going on. And people claim they couldn't be bothered using the shift key (or whatever). Surely it takes more effort (if you ever learnt to type properly) to remember to not use the shift key?
I have kicked people off a mailing list I administer because they don't make any sense for the reasons above. I don't reply fully to e-mails, I just tell them to send it again so that I can understand it.
I also find that the people who send the mails like that tend to be quite stupid. I got an e-mail along the lines of:
"do u knw abt undergorund rails"
That was it. I asked what he meant by underground rails. The reply was like this:
"undergorund rails in croydon"
I again asked what he meant by underground rails in Croydon, as it is quite ambiguous, and the area very large. Response:
"my dad told me"
At this point, I wrote an e-mail explaining how much easier it would be for him to just type properly and explain what he meant. I think he wanted me to tell him all I knew about underground features in the area, but I couldn't be bothered because of his attitude.
Yes, there is a place for them on phones and SMS as they aren't easy to type on (even with practice, you can't do 80wpm on a numeric pad). There is also a place for acronyms, such as LOL, BTW, BRB etc. because they actually save a lot of time.
I can tell some bastard is going to send me SMS speak mails now just to wind me up...
One of the the things I have always loved about the English language is its democratic elitism. Permit me to explain. Some languages, such as French, actually have a body that decides formally what consitutes the language.
English doesn't do that. English does have an elite that decides what is in the standard language, but that elite is the collection of writers, editors, and lexicographers who work with the language in the modes of cultural production. So, what Standard English is is decided by a literate elite, but membership in this literate elite is open to anyone based on merit.
But that is not all. Beneath that "high brow" crowd who write literature and scan literature for new usage, there are hundreds of thousands of idiomatic communities speaking and using untold varieties of English. These are not "Standard English," but they are living, breathing, socially functional dialects of English. From time to time, a writer of genius emerges from such a community and brings new usage, idioms, and ways of speaking into that "staid and stuffy" elite. Those portions that speak in new ways, ways that other communities of English find useful, get taken up by the English speaking world at large. Then we find these new usages showing up both in other dialect communities, and in the elite world of "Standard English."
Thus the world of Standard English is reactionary, conservative, and resistant to change, but this is as it should be. This is the force of stability that allows us to read (albeit with difficulty for some) six hundred year old Elizabethan English, like Shakespeare, and should allow English speakers six hundred years from now to read Toni Morrison or Neal Stephenson. At the same time, the vernacular throbs with creativity. Vibrant and electric new words, phrases and idioms crackle into being every day. Most are lost. Some appear only in the margins, in the throw away dialoge of television scripts, or in idiom spoken by characters in novels; mere markers in the history of the language. Some, however, merge into that conservative realm where they join such everyday poetry as "being blue," or "flight of stairs."
I've studied only a few of the world's languages, but so far English is my one true love. Latin and French have their charms for me, but English owns my mind. I treasure both the stodgy elite (which anyone may join; all one must do is add to the great literature of the English language -- no problem!), and the endless, almost frantic, creativity of everyday speakers of English.
Bearing in mind all of the foregoing, schools are not there to institutionalize the random creativity of English. That takes care of itself. They are there to be sure that we all have access to the stodgy collection of Standard English, so we may get our random creativity past the reactionary gatekeepers of the language. All good literature simultaneously reveres the language and subverts it. The most striking example, to me, is "Huckleberry Finn," the first novel with real American voices in it, as opposed to a bunch of Americans speaking more or less just like British speakers of English. Reverence and subversion.
Agreed.
We don't teach English in schools so that kids can simply communicate -- they can already do that. We teach them so that they can communicate convincingly. With any luck at all these students will one day have to convince a group of other people that their ideas are valid. Most likely these will be people that they don't already know, and that quite possibly will be from a different culture. Perhaps their audience will even be from another part of the world and English will be a second language that they learned in school. Such and audience will lack the cultural reference points necessary to understand slang.
It is common for subcultures to develop their own vocabulary. They do it sometimes for their own ease of communication, and and sometimes so that they can set themselves apart culturally from everyone else. Formal English is constantly changing to allow the more common of those words. I have no doubt that some chatroom and hacker slang will have become standard when we look back in a few years. Until then, however, these words will have limited usefulness when communicating formally.
The art of self-expression and the art of being convincing are both important goals of English classes. Both must be taught, but one should not be taught at the expense of the other.
At least, it didn't start as the chat rooms. Even just a few years ago (well, ok, 7 years ago when I was in Grade 10) the vile language known as d3wd hadn't propagated fully. Most chatrooms were still havens for people who could actually communicate in properly composed English.
Where the linguistic nightmare first appeared was in games like Diablo, Ultima Online, and Everquest.
nitwit_01 tells you 'cn u plz tp me 2 wc plz'
you reply 'What's that in English?'
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I have been penalized on papers for not having it in CAPS but I have never been penalized for OK. I wonder if there are grammicatal rules for contracting Okay. Or perhaps "Thru" is going to replace Through.
/\/\I L33t S|!77z" in school... come on it was fine on a BBS but kids have to grow up and learn that certain behaviors and language have certain rules on where they can be used. Slang is very valid in literature but only in certain circumstances (for instance a quote "Sup Foo!" said Jessie to the rabbi.)
/. readers (is /. a correct contraction of Slash Dot?)
This is as bad as Ebonic in classrooms, I didn't work hard in elementry school learning to read, speak, and write so when I get to college I can have an instructor trying to teach me how to butcher English. I am no A student in English, but I at least try. Of course I would expect to get docked points for using Thru or ok. Oddly though I have never used OK outside of dialog. Remember in literature if it's dialog, anything goes. Perhaps this scenario is permissible:
"Jeff are you ok?" yelled Terri. As Terri sifted through the rubble she caught a glimpse of Jeff. It seems that Jeff was okay after all.
I wonder if I could get away with "Ph34r
I wonder if the Internet is some how stunting the growth of the new generation... Hmmm... I'd like to see a reseach paper on that on. HEY YOU! WRITE A PAPER ON IT. I think it would be a great discussion for
Oh well I am a fossil I guess... but I wonder how much the Internet has "Dumbed-Down" peoples writing skills.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Shakespeare. Not Shakespear. Yes, his crest was someone shaking a spear, but just because his name was based on the word spear does NOT mean that you can drop the e.
Or does this "evolution" everyone's touting include lopping letters of names, now, too?
The important thing about Huck Finn (besides it being a novel) is that Twain knew the difference between a tale told in Huck's voice and a factual essay, and could write in either mode. A student would get no credit from me for breaking a rule of written communication unless he/she both understood the rules and understood when it was okay to break them.
'r' and 'u' do not constitute l33t speak. that's n00b speak. 401 14/\/\3|25. now, if they start writing things in actual l33t speak... hah. right. not a chance. the school system here teachs kids to spell shitty, they used hooked-on-phonics. yes, really.
My wife taught 3rd grade, and she drilled those kids with the multiplication tables so hard that they were bleeding products by the end of the year. It was her first year teaching, and she was pissed that the previous teachers had taught the kids all of these stupid short-cuts and memory tricks. Her biggest pet peeve was "touch math." The kids learned to touch each number in certain places a certain number of times, so to add 5 + 7, they would touch the "5" five times and the "7" seven times as they counted up to 12. She was just about ready to quit when she had a girl up at the board and wrote "7 + 0" for the girl to solve. The girl proceeded to count to seven while she touched the "7" seven times, then stared at the "0," utterly confounded, and was unable to complete the problem. When she started teaching them multiplication, they tried to adapt touch math to that. To solve 2x3, they would touch the "2" twice, and then repeat three times. That's when she started giving them verbal quizzes almost daily, in which she would shoot off about 25 multiplication problems, and give the students approximately 3 seconds to solve each before moving on. They learned pretty fast that it's a lot easier to learn 7x9 = 63 than to try to touch the "7" seven times and repeat nine times in three seconds. She graded the quizzes and returned them too. When the kids realized they were sinking, most of them just got off of their lazy butts and learned their multiplication tables. It may seem harsh, but it's exactly what those kids needed. They had had lazy teachers before, and most of them came from homes where laziness was a way of life and education was not exactly a priority (this was a pretty poor school). There were a very few for whom the multiplication tables were genuinely beyond their mental capacity, and they will probably never know them, but most of them got it together and learned something.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Because kids are too stupid and lazy to actually learn how to communicate properly, we should reward them by officially recognizing their slang as a "language?" I think not! Let's not reward ignorance and stupidity. Not only does it not do the child any favors, it doesn't do much for our already maligned education system either.
Instead of letting their children spend all day chatting with their peers on the internet, parents should make them actually spend time STUDYING. Has studying become a lost art form or are kids today really that lazy?
There's a place and time for slang. Hell, I'm guilty of using it myself in informal settings. But there's a difference in chatting with your friends and trying to get your point across in a supposedly professional paper for school or work. If kids are too stupid to realize this, then they deserve the low scores they receive.
Regarding multiplication: Calculators break, or the batteries die. And I'm the only person I know who carries a calculator with them at all times.
The answer to a person being unable to function without their tools is not to make the tool more pervasive. This goes for calculators and spellcheckers (which don't correct the missuse of 'to' and 'too' -- do you check for this yourself?).
On "IRC speak": I have no problem at all with them using shorthand in appropriate situations. You're taking notes in class? You're talking on AIM or IRC? Fine. Use shorthand. In fact, I recommend that they learn -real- shorthand (you don't think these idiots invented it, do you?), as it provides more comprehensive rules for abbreviation, rather than a small number of replacement words.
The problem is that they were unable to recognize that they were using this shorthand, or when it was inapporpriate to do so. Reports in English class (which shorthand IS NOT) should be in English. Actually, in school the secondary objective of any report (whether in English class or not) is to teach effective writing, and thus should also be in English.
It's like people who use a lot of slang. All of the heavy-slang users I've ever hung out with know it's slang they're using, and can stop when the situation warrants.
The enemies of Democracy are
So if you combine this with the previous post with numeric and phonetic substitutions, you get something like:
0ur d4d, wh0 0wnz h34v3n, j00 r0ck! 137 411 0ur B453 50m3d4y b3 Bl0ng 2 U! mA j00 0wn 34rth 1ik3 j00 0wn20r5 h34v3n. give us thi5 dA our w4r3z, mp3z, + pr0n thru a phat pip3. + cut u5 50m3 514ck wh3n w3 act lik3 n00B l4m3rz, just a5 w3 t34ch n00bz when thA act l4m3 0n us. p13453 d0n't giv3 u5 root on s0m3 p00r d00d'z b0x3n wh3n w3'r3 t00 pi553d 0ff t0 grep r1ght + wr0ng, + if j00 c4n k33p th3 f3i 0ff 0ur b4cks, w3'd b3 k00l. f0r j00 0wn r00t 0n 4ll 0ur b0x3n 4ever + 3v3r, 4m3n.
whew!
-SablKnight
This is flame bait but I ask you to publish it to allow me to round off what I want to say.
I'm the person who started the original reply post "Bush War Monger". I'd like to state I'm British, and I don't believe in what the USA plans to do because of its hypocrisy (the majority of the British populas, around 68%, contrary to popular American belief, don't believe in war with Iraq). It states that Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction (Israel has these and is an agressor), it breaks UN accords (Israel still holds Palestinian land, against UN agreements to pull out), and it obviously should not be able to defend itself (so why does America/UK etc have these weapons?). Bush continues to fund and supply weapons to Israel. I am not against the USA, it is a beautiful country I have visited time and again but when you can't see you have an idiot as a President its time to take your head out of the wood work. The President will only cause more trouble for your country. Have you not learnt from watching what Israel does, can you not see what Israel is causing the Palestinians to do?