I think there is enough exposure to text or net speak in the world around us to not have to spend an abundance of time on teaching it in the classroom. Before we can start to change and personalise our language and create text or net speak in an efficient and poignant way, we need to master our written and spoken language.
For the weaker literacy students, would text speak really be a detriment to learning our correct conventions? or could it perhaps be the entry point to learning more?
At the same time, by allowing text speak to be flowing into our classrooms without control we may run the risk of spending more time than necessary on the subject. After all, at the end of the day, we want our students to be comfortable and confident in using the correct conventions of our language in order to lead a fulfilling life, not being limited to making friends through the net or sms.
It is a very current subject that would appeal to most young adolescents (would they not at least have to have a mobile?), more as an entertaining and engaging issue than a need to actually learn how to master it. When it creeps into an area where it does not belong, it is important to make the students aware of the audience and perhaps give opportunities to express their wishes to use text speak in other discussions.
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6 years ago
As I've mentioned on a few other blogs, I doubt you'd want to spend much time (if any) teaching txtspk in a mainstream classroom, but it could provide a springboard for codeswitching activities where you help students learn how, when, where and why to switch into (and more importantly, out of) txtspk as they develop a sense of linguistic boundaries and when they must use more standard language.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it's different in a foreign/second/additional language situation - say, in a school Intensive English Centre - where you might teach immigrant or refugee children elements of txtspk in the same way you'd teach idioms, i.e., to help them acclimatise to the local context.