TxtSpk

The subject matter in this week’s workshop was extremely timely, relevant and interesting (well, interesting for me anyway!) We looked the areas of print, texting and hypertext literacy. It may sound dry, but there is much to be discussed!
Watching last week’s Q&A highlighted the way social networking sites such as Twitter have been integrated into mainstream media. During Kevin Rudd’s slip of the tongue, Twitter feeds went off the Richter scale- so much off the scale that there were over 18,000 posts during the show. ‘Q&A in 60 Seconds’ is a YouTube clip that highlights very nicely, in 60 seconds, the number of tweets, and the key terms of each of the posts. Check out the link below.

I, too, am a convert of Twitter. While I am still finding my feet with this technology, I love that I can follow my favourite shows, sporting teams, celebrities, restaurant, companies, and other random people. Find and follow me, the Blondpineapple, on Twitter today.

Onto a more education related matter, is there a place for textspeak (or should it be Txtspk?) in our classrooms. The question was raised: how does it affect our children’s literacy skills? I was extremely surprised by the findings. According to linguist David Crystal textspeak doesn’t harm student’s literacy skills. In fact, it is seen to be almost beneficial. Crystal made an extremely good point- if a child leaves certain letters out of a word, then he or she must know how to spell that word in the first place. Fascinating stuff and an area to watch in the future.

All this speaking about speaking makes me think of how I use textspeak in everyday language. Apart from the standard use on the net (Facebook, Twitter and the like) I have been known to use sayings such as, “I’m getting a coffee, BRB”, “Wow, that is literal LOL” and “Seriously, that was a CWOT”.

For the novice, I’ll provide a translation. BRB= Be right back. LOL= Laugh out loud. CWOT= complete waste of time. Slightly sad that I use it, yes, but brings me to a more important point. If I, as a teacher, use this language, it would be hypocritical of me to criticise and penalise students for using it in the classroom. I think that a happy medium would have to be reached. Textspeak would be acceptable in conversations, but not to in essays or written pieces. I am a literacy purists- I would hate to see the demise of the old fashioned written essay!

I think that’s all about textspeak for now. And while there is much more to be discussed regarding this area, that is for another time, and another blog!

C U L8ER