Teen Use of Non Standard English in School
I’m :0] (smiling) because of an article that was just posted on CNN describing how teenagers are showing an increase in use of emoticon’s in school assignments, instead of standard English.
The digital generation as the article refers to the youth who blog, text, and utilize symbols to denote language is quite interesting. If you are not :-0 (surprised) by what I’m writing about, its probably because you have more than likely seen it in student work that has been turned in for grading.
If you are an English teacher and think this is no :-D (laughing) matter, the CNN article states that the chairman of the National Commission of Writing at the College board believes that one day there will be no need to capitalize the beginning of sentences, and other forms of punctuation will also be retired as language assimilates into the digital age, :-o (Wow).
As an educator the insight into this phenomena that I found most interesting, was that the study found students who are into technology, are shying away from doing written assignments with computers. These digital students prefer to hand write their assignments on paper using longhand :-o (surprise). For the complete article please click here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/teen.writing.ap/index.html