November 5, 2006
Our language is being murdered
Scottish children’s grasp of the English language is diminishing year on year, reports The Times.
"This trend is exacerbated by the increasing use of SMS shorthand in public exams, is the conclusion drawn by the Principal Assessor Report for Standard Grade English in 2006.
Those marking exams are no longer presented with neat, comprehensible scripts, but with pages and pages of C U l8r, heavily illustrated with emoticons, those smiley or gloomy faces so beloved of teenagers, who probably have no idea that emoticons were originally made up of punctuation marks. In Scotland today, children presenting such scripts go unpenalised."
Links to other similar studies, some on the positive impact of text messaging shorthand, others on the negative impact.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/11/014001.htm