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jennifercammon

Texting, Twitter contributing to students' poor grammar skills, profs say - The Globe a... - 1 views

  • Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills. Almost a third of those students are failing. "Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level," says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University. "We would certainly like it to be a lot lower." Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.
  • Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none. Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser University
  • Emoticons, truncated and butchered words such as 'cuz,' are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser. "Little happy faces ... or a sad face ... little abbreviations," show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani. "Instead of 'because', it's 'cuz'. That's one I see fairly frequently," she says, and these are new in the past five years. Khan Hemani sends appeal submissions with emoticons in them back to students to be re-written "because a committee will immediately get their backs up when they see that kind of written style."
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  • "The words 'a lot' have become one word, for everyone, as far as I can tell. 'Definitely' is always spelled with an 'a' - 'definately'. I don't know why," says Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser.
  • The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an e-mail to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.
  • "It would say to me ... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.
ashleykitty

Facebook and Twitter 'harm pupils literacy' claim headmasters | Mail Online - 1 views

  • Children's literacy is being damaged by social media, headmasters claim.They say pupils are too distracted by sites such as Facebook and Twitter to bother to read a book.As a result, thousands are poor spellers and have little understanding of grammar.
  • A survey of 214 secondary school heads found that 70 per cent believe Facebook and Twitter are ‘bad for literacy’.Excessive use of such sites means youngsters’ spelling and grammar have deteriorated. For example, some write ‘l8’ rather than ‘late’, while others rely on computer spellcheckers to correct their mistakes.
  • Bosses regularly complain about the poor literacy standards among school leavers, whose written English in applications forms and CVs can be shocking.
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  • The research uses examples such as one applicant stating: ‘I wont to work wiv you’re company.’ Others regularly confuse the words ‘to’ and ‘too’, such as: ‘I’d like too work with you’, while asking whether job ‘oppurtunities’ are ‘avalible’ at the company.Others sign their letters with several kisses, showing an inappropriate level of friendliness with a potential boss who they have never met.
jennifercammon

School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-Instant Messaging: Friend or Foe of Stu... - 1 views

  • One concern about IM has to do with the "bastardization" of language. Several articles indicate that students who use messaging on a frequent basis often use bad grammar, poor punctuation, and improper abbreviations in academic writing. According to Lee (2002), "teachers say that papers are being written with shortened words, improper capitalization and punctuation, and characters like &, $ and @. " However, something that is not always considered is that these mistakes are often unintentional – when students use IM frequently, they reach a saturation point where they no longer notice the IM lingo because they are so used to seeing it. Montana Hodgen, a 16-year old high school student in Montclair, New Jersey, "was so accustomed to instant-messaging abbreviations that she often read right past them" (Lee, 2002). As she puts it, "I was so used to reading what my friends wrote to me on Instant Messenger that I didn't even realize that there was something wrong," she said. She said her ability to separate formal and informal English declined the more she used instant messages" (Lee, 2002).This was also a problem for Carl Sharp, whose 15-year old son's summer job application read "i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids" (Friess, 2003), and English instructor Cindy Glover, who – while teaching undergraduate freshman composition in 2002 – "spent a lot of time unteaching Internet-speak. 'My students were trying to communicate fairly academic, scholarly thoughts, but some of them didn't seem to know it's "y-o-u," not "u"'" (Freiss, 2003.) These examples give credence to Montana Hodgen's point, that heavy IM use actually changes the way students read words on a page.
licia21kirk

The 4 Negative Side Effects Of Technology - Edudemic - 2 views

  • 3. Declining Writing Skills Due to the excessive usage of online chatting and shortcuts, the writing skills of today’s young generation have declined quite tremendously. These days, children are relying more and more on digital communication that they have totally forgot about improving their writing skills. They don’t know the spelling of different words, how to use grammar properly or how to do cursive writing.
  • 4. Lack of Physical Interactivity No one can deny the fact that the advancement of technology has produced a completely unique method of interaction and communication. Now, more and more people are interacting with others through different platforms like apps, role-playing online games, social networks, etc. This advancement has hampered the physical interaction skills of many children. Due to that they don’t know how to interact with others when they meet them in-person or what gesture they should carry. The bottom line is that while technology is a necessity to survive and flourish in this age of advancement, however, parents should control their children by keeping an eye on its excessive usage.
  • 1. Elevated Exasperation These days, children indulge themselves in internet, games or texting. These activities have affected their psyche negatively, consequently leading to increased frustration. Now they get frustrated whenever they are asked to do anything while playing games or using internet. For instance, when their parents ask them to take the trash out, they get furious instantly. This behavior has shattered many parent-children relationships.
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  • 2. Deteriorated Patience Patience is a very precious virtue and its scarcity could deteriorate a person’s Will. Determination is a necessity that comes with patience and without it no individual can survive the hardships of life. According to studies, tolerance in children is vanishing quite increasingly due to the improper use of technology. For example, children get frustrated quickly when they surf internet and the page they want to view takes time to load.
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