Is chatspeak the death of English as we know it?

If chatspeak may potentially change English as it currently is, I say: bring it on!

English is problematic in many, many ways. One way in particular, that really unnerves me, is the fact that we write English the way it was pronounced 600 years ago! That's why the spelling of words like night and knife and knitting don't make much sense to English speakers today. These words reflect the Old English pronounciations when night was actually pronounced as ny-g-ht and knife as k-nife. Take a Linguistics class and learn about the evolution of language and you'll see why chatspeak isn't anything to fear.

The beautiful thing about language is that it is constantly changing and morphing. Popular slang becomes accepted into the language, and words we don't use anymore get dropped. People combine words to create new words. People switch the sounds in words to create as well. For example, when the first settlers arrived in America, the correct way to pronounce the word "ask" was "aks." Over time, the sounds in the word were mixed around in a linguistic process known as metathesis. Today, the common misconception is that people who pronounce "ask" as "aks" are ignorant or uneducated, when, in fact, it is simply a preservation of the original pronounciation.

English, for most of its history, has been a bloody and brutal language (quite literally), and it is constantly changing. Especially now, when we live in such a digital world, our vocabulary and language is changing drastically. We haven't realized it yet, but I think in about a decade or so from now, we'll look back at this time period and realize that a whole new era of English has started. Maybe it'll be called the "Post-Modern English Era."

Chatspeak is nothing to fear because I don't believe it is deteriorating the English language. I think it has the potential to add some vibrancy and excitement to our language. At the same time, the con side of the article argues that chatspeak is not harmful because students know the difference between using standard/proper English vs. chatting lingo. If teachers continue to teach students about grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, students will have no problem turning off their chatspeak in the classroom. But I think sometimes inviting chatspeak into the classroom can be a way to get students engaged. For example, when looking for resources for a Romeo & Juliet unit, I stumbled across a really hilarious and brilliant rendition of the tragedy in text message/chatting format. I think I'd have fun bringing this version in the classroom and comparing it to the archaic language of Shakespeare.

Check it out here.

Chatspeak is not completely a bad thing. As long as students recognize that there is a specific time and place for it (and usually, this means outside the classroom), there is nothing wrong with allowing students to continue writing, typing, texting, and communicating in their digital native lingo.

Cyberbullying

I think I first encountered cyberbullying when I was in about the 6th grade. My family had just gotten a desk top computer and AOL. I remember I was really obsessed with boybands (especially *NSync) and would sometimes go into the NSync AOL chat rooms to talk with other girls about how cute we thought JC was (ha ha). Anyway, occasionally, other users from the Backstreet Boys chatroom sometimes ventured into the NSync chatroom to cause problems. They'd usually talk about how much NSync sucks and that BSB (Backstreet Boys) were so much better. And then sometimes they'd make personal attacks like, "All the girls in this chatroom are dumb and suck." Lolz. I remember girls individually IMing me to call me names, etc. Sometimes, I retaliated and went into the BSB chatrooms and did the same thing. This is a pretty silly example and nowhere near as serious or as horrible as other instances of cyberbullying, but I think it still constitutes as bullying.

Cyberbullying means harassing someone through the use of technology. Cyberbullying is such a huge problem because of the anonymous shield that technology provides. A person can hide behind their technological devices and even make up fake personalities and identities. With the lack of accountability, people are able to be cruel, brutal tormentors and, a lot of time, get away with it.

Cyberbullying is scary because there are no boundaries. Because we live in such a digital age, I can be unprotected from bullying no matter where I am, even in my own bedroom.

Later in high school, cyberbullying became a problem on social sites. I remember almost every single person at my high school had a blog account on xanga.com. One of my friends had created a fake blog for one of the administrative faculty members at our school, similar to the parody that was mentioned in the article "Cyberbullying: Is there anything we can do?" There were several parody blogs that popped up in high school. One of the administrators found out about her fake blog site, and then Xanga was blocked at my high school.

I think I am ready to confront this inevitable issue in my classroom, especially since I've had countless experiences with cyberbullying as a Digital Native. It is an issue I plan on talking about in my classroom. I will find ways to incorporate character education in my curriculum, and this can be done by using cyberbullying as an example because it is often incredibly harmful and painful. I think students bully as a way to externally express pain that they feel on the inside. It's important to get to the root of those problems and having team building and respect building activities in my classroom will be important for students to learn to respect each other and, importantly, themselves.

I think my instructor Micaela was correct when she said that a lot of times, students don't know what they should do or how they should behave. As educators, we can't just assume that students know how to treat others with respect, kindness, and acceptance because maybe they haven't had the opportunity to learn these values in their homes. We are responsible, as teachers, to help our students practice these values.

The most difficult part about cyberbullying is how limitless it is. It's happening all the time, especially outside school grounds. It unrealistic for educators to be solely responsible for preventing and stopping cyberbullying because we can't be expected to go into students' personal accounts or into students' homes. The family and the community must be involved in eradicating cyberbullying if we want to successfully prevent it.

Have you Googled yourself lately?

I first joined MySpace when I was 16 years old. I was really reluctant at first because I thought it sounded ridiculous. It seemed so superficial - posting a bunch of photos of yourself, telling everybody what you like or don't like. But all my friends and peers in high school were making profiles, so I finally gave in.

When MySpace first came out, it was rather primitive in comparison to the MySpace and Facebook today. One thing I don't remember is any privacy options. So anything I posted on MySpace at that time period was open to the world. Pretty scary, although my teenage brain never realized that!

During my freshman year of college an educator informed my class about how employers would be looking at social networking sites when considering hiring someone for a position. And not only that, but anything someone posts on the internet is permanent, floating in the infinity of cyberspace forever. On top of that, everything on MySpace is archived and employers can gain access to archived information through different companies for a fee. Posted photos of yourself drunk on MySpace? Posted a journal entry about how much you hate your boss? Even if you deleted that photo or that blog, its imprint is still out there and is still visible and trackable by companies. Ever since discovering that, I've been really conscious about what I put on the internet because what I say can and will be used against me.

I google myself often and nothing exciting ever comes up. There are many Christina Busbys in the world, and the results that show up on google have nothing to do with me, which is fine by me. I don't like the idea of someone being able to search and find me. Because of this fear, I frequently google my name just to make sure nothings comes up. When I used to google myself in high school, my results from various community 10Ks that I ran showed up. Also, my grandmother's obituary often showed up since we both have the same name.

When I searched myself on pipl.com, my MySpace page showed up, which is fine because it's private: http://www.myspace.com/yerawaffle

My Facebook page also showed up, which also isn't a problem because everything on my Facebook is very private.

One thing that surprised me about my pipl.com search, however, was a link to an old photo album I made on photobucket.com. I had forgotten this photobucket account even existed and was embarassed to find that it wasn't private and anyone could look at photos I had posted. A lot of the photos were really silly pictures from high school and my first year of college. There wasn't anything inappropriate or bad per se, but I still would have been horrified if any of my students had found it. I promptly set my account to private.

I do have a personal blog site, but I'm not worried about students finding it because not only is it not connected to my name in any way, but it is also not connected to my email address. And even if it was connected to my email address, I would never give my students my personal email address.

What surprised me the most about the article "Have you Googled yourself lately?" was how some educators are very quick to befriend their students on social networking sites, which, I feel, is a big NO NO. I find it inappropriate and unprofessional. Teachers and students should not be friends on something as casual as a social networking site. I'm not even sure if teachers and students should really even be friends. To me, that crosses personal limitations.

Sometimes, I find myself frustrated with the way society seems to hold teachers to different standards than everyone else. Other times, I can understand this because we hold a lot of power and responsibility over a lot of children. But why can't everyone be held to really high standards and expectations? Why can't everyone be held accountable for the things that they do? I think a parent's job is significantly more important than a teacher's job, but it seems that parents aren't held to higher "super" standards. Why not?

I believe in freedom of speech and expression and I take that very seriously. And when I think about how, as a teacher, I may not be able to freely express myself however I would like, it makes me want to start writing a manifesto and then running through the streets, ready to fight and protest loudly and defend my right as a human being. Well, not really, but I'll be thinking about what I can do so that people will start recognizing that teachers are ordinary human beings, not super people.

Digital Native, Digital Immigrant

I felt like Prensky was talking about me and students of my generation, along with the current generation of students. I see how it’s difficult for me to think sequentially and logically. I am also excellent at multi-tasking, and not only that, but I also recognize how instant gratification plays a major role in my life: I want things now, quickly, to the point, instantly. My sister who is a year younger is the same way. Her mind bounces from one thing to the next so quickly and frequently that when she’s listening to her iPod or the radio, she can’t listen to a song the whole way through. She’ll get bored and will need to change it to a new song that interests her.

Internet is also the reason why when we observe mainstream music today - especially all the emo, screamo, indie, pop punk whatever it is that young people listen to - bands don’t include awesome guitar solos and their songs are rarely over three to four minutes in length. My generation doesn’t have the patience to listen to longer songs because we’ve been programmed to have things immediately and quickly. Where is my generation’s Led Zeppelin? Rush? Pink Floyd? Eight minute songs? Forget about it. Give us something quick and simple before we get bored and move on to something more interesting. Lady Gaga is so popular because she’s so ADD - her music and her appearance is all over the place.



Students today flitter from one thing to the next so quickly. This is our reality and there’s nothing we can do to change it or revert back to the “good days” - at least this is what Prensky seems to say in his articles.

I consider myself to be a Digital Native in many respects. I have been surrounded by and utilized technology my entire life. However, this next generation of students I will be teaching, although also in a technological and digital world, are vastly different from me. For example, a lot of my adolescence was spent blogging and IM-ing. Students today have spent a good portion of their lives playing on cell phones sending thousands of text messages a month, obsessing over their appearance on social networking sites, and disconnecting themselves from the world through iPods. I recognized I am getting out of touch with the most current technology when I picked up my boyfriend’s 12 year old niece’s iPod touch and couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on! So in this respect, I am also a Digital Immigrant.



What I appreciate about Prensky’s perspective is that we need to catch up with our students. The fact is that their brains are different and so we have no choice but to adapt to the way they are now. Teaching methods certainly are out of date and need to be renovated to interest and suit students today.

There were some things I disagreed with, however. For example, he talks about how video games are the most useful ways to teach students today; he says that if a student plays an educational game for six hours on a Saturday, that adds another whole instruction day to the week. Why on earth would we encourage students to sit around for hours playing video games? I agree that it is a really innovative way and effective way to teach students today, but I’m concerned with the fact that students aren’t going out and being physically active. That’s one of the reasons I am hesitant when it comes to online instruction - what about the physical and social aspects that are necessary for human beings? I don’t want the world to become a place where we hide behind screens and use our digital technology to connect with each other. This seems to be the accelerating trend. I want my students to also be able to interact with human beings, real human beings, not just machines. Prensky is pushing us toward technology and stressing that it is the only way or else we’ll lose our students. I disagree. No matter what, real life and the experiences involved with living real life is superior to any sort of replication.

About Me

My name is Christina Busby and I'm hoping to teach high school level Language Arts and Art. I'd be happy teaching any grade level in high school, but I think I'd prefer juniors and seniors.

My favorite animal is the immortal jellyfish (turritopsis nutricula). This jelly has the ability to revert back to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. When it is an adult, it reverts back to a stage of infancy and then continues its life cycle again. Since it can do this indefinitely, this jelly fish is considered biologically immortal.

Pretty awesome.