The WRITING Question
Mubarak Abdessalami
What if we start combating the worst form of illiteracy ever?
To know to write, but in a very awkward incomprehensible way for every
one to read and decode:
- "pls" for "please",
- "u" for "you",
- "r" for "are",
- "4" for "for",
- "c" for "see",
- "brb" for "be right back",
- "j/k" for "just kidding",
- "jam" for "just a minute",
- "cul" for "see you later"
- "asl" for "Age/Sex/Location" when asking for a chatter's personal
information.
And finally "lol" for "Laugh Out Loud" or "Lots Of Love". It
always depends on who writes and who reads. These syntactical and
lexical reductions or say 'abbreviations' or 'acronyms' are strategies
employed to save time, effort and space but they kill the original
language features slowly until 'literate' people become illiterate;
which is an awkward learning development direction. Normally
illiterate people with learning become literate.
Well, teachers are certainly not happy with the "Salng,
Acronyms, Emoticons, ClipArt, Smileys and Asterisks" "language"
technology has provided to force people to communicate through web
chat, instant messaging, texting, email and Short messages, to get rid
of what remains of what is called standard language, no more grammar,
no more styles, no more rhetoric. Any one, please, to predict the
future of the human written language?!
This group is trying to look for ways to foster and assist
students not to get used to those "signs" and lose the authentic way
language is used to deliver information. The learners nowadays spend
more time on the MSN (MicroSoft Networks) than the time they spend in
class. Therefore the danger is deadly if we don’t react quickly.
Many teachers suggest exploiting the learners' attachment and
love for chat to teach them how to write right. Let's start talking
writing on all levels and exchange ideas that may drag the learners
from the trap of being lost or at least " >:-( " [Annoyed] or " #:-o
" [shocked] when they grow up unable to communicate their ideas
normally using the genuine language script.
It is quite exasperating to be a student for years and be not
able to write right. It is never too late to mend however, if our
teaching writing methods go beyond the focus on spelling, vocabulary
and tenses only to ponder more on focal questions especially what
composition for which genre and audience; besides insisting on the
apposite format and tone to reverse the effects of the phenomenon of
no reading thus no writing. There are several ways to introduce
writing to the students without even mentioning that it is the sort of
horrible assignment the students try to avoid by presenting all sorts
of excuses.
Here are two projects I want to share with you. Both of them
seek to engage the students to adopt a very convenient behaviour
towards writing with the proviso to get rid of all the old ideas they
had about writing tasks including excuses. The students will not be
obliged to look for pretexts not to write any more because instead
they’ll be looking for materials prone to enrich their productions.
What constitutes an obstacle for them is generally the outline? Now
that they have an idea on how to deal with that, all that they’ll need
is just to read a lot and to make researches in order to enrich their
vocabulary repertory and spelling skills.
Though this generation seem to rely upon easy tasks with easy
means for accomplishment, they are not really hard to involve in a
somehow difficult task that needs hard work provided that you show
them how to get started. The more you train them on how to write, the
less frustrated they are when they have to do a writing assignment.
They'll quickly make a distinction between chat language and serious
writing one. They will use each appropriately. In your future
students' essays you'll never find things like "GMTA" for “Great Minds
Think Alike” or " **** " popcorn. Check the projects, ";->" (devilish
wink)