Texting

One of the discussions this week was how huge a phenomenon texting has become. It's everywhere! From cell phones, to billboards, to internet lingo and now even to speech! What makes everyone so enamored about texting? Will the future change in regards to the importance of speech and proper spelling? Are you going downhill in our verbal skills because of texting?
These are some great questions and I do think that texting is affecting everyone in some way or another in these days. There are some great internet sites that explain the impact of texting on this world community, Wikipedia has some really neat information on how texting got started and who actually sent the first text messagee. It also explains how different countries have responded to the usage of text messaging in their countries. Webopedia not only has a guide to understanding texting abbreviations, but it also explains what almost every kind of abbreviations means in the texting world. Very helpful and informational, especially for the parent who doesn't know what PIR means (i.e. Parent In Room). One website I came across on the internet wrote a great article about the influence of text messaging/instant messaging in children's school work. It talks of how teachers have seen that many children who frequently use text messaging tend to have bad grammer and reading skills. Other teachers are responding to this new form of lingo with a positive spin, saying it allows children to express their thoughts better and anything allowing children with the ability to write is a good thing. Certainly, texting needs to be recognized by teachers everywhere as something many teens use to communicate but I don't think we should use texting as a way to communicate on a day-to-day basis. It's vague, coded and very informal...not something, I think that, that we should be training our children to communicate in the future. We should want them to understand all forms of writing but know that there must be a differentiation between formal and informal English and make sure everyone is aware of what type of language needs to be used on a daily basis.