Using the texting trend
Manaswini Sridhar
Everyone is texting everyone else in the world today. Also called SMS or Short Message Service, it has invaded all communication gadgets, making it universally acceptable across gender and age; and most importantly, making it convenient, and like all things in today’s world, done NOW!
Educators – and more specifically – school teachers worry about the impact this instant technique has on language learning, leading to the flouting of grammatical norms and the lack of sentence structure and punctuation in the student’s language patterns. There is scant respect for vocabulary in the traditional sense of the term since it is replaced so effortlessly by pictograms, acronyms, and abbreviations. The slang that is used is very aptly also called txt spk because the idea behind the communication is to use as few characters as possible as originally SMS would only allow 160 characters, and therefore the sender had to be very creative in shortening and abbreviating all the information that needed to be sent. However, what worries, nay… nags teachers is that texting has led to impoverished language in the majority of cases.
Let’s leave it to linguists to deal with the decline of formal language. What can we as teachers do to use texting to liven up the classroom, and in the process help students understand that there is a different and a more correct way of writing?
Websites such as http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp and http://mashable.com/2012/09/21/text-messaging-history/#ug8C3s5kxZqx give a clear list of the texting words in vogue. Why not use some of these texts and have students decode them and then write them out in acceptable language, which means making sure that the structure is grammatically acceptable, the words are spelt out in their full and correct form, and the necessary punctuation is inserted? At the end of the exercise, some students may discern that decoding text messages is sometimes as perplexing as writing flawless sentences.
Teachers could begin with the easy one-liners so that students understand what aspects of the language they need to focus on before they deal with the more complex passages.
im w8ing for u outside
This sentence needs to be rewritten as: I’m waiting for you outside. The two features missing in the sentence as far as punctuation goes are the apostrophe and the full stop. Additionally, the words waiting and you need to be spelled out in their full form.
The student who is not totally familiar with texting will of course have to wrack his/her brains and try to decipher the message based on the sounds of the language. This too is an exercise in understanding language and is a simpler version of composition (or comprehension!) writing.
If you wish to challenge your students on a higher scale, why not have them decode a conversation between two people? Again, the aim of the task is to write out the conversation, paying particular attention to the grammatical details, spelling, and punctuation.
Let’s have a look at a telephone conversation between the manager of a hotel and a gentleman who wishes to reserve a room in the hotel.
A: gud AM. welcom 2 Woodlands htl
B: gud AM. id lk 2 mke a resRv8n 4t 3rd w/e in oct
A: jst a min sir. w’v sevrl r%ms avail. 4 dat pRticulR w/e. n watz d Xact d8 of yr arrival
B: d 16th
A: how mNE days wiL U reqiR d room sir
B: IL B stayin 4 2 nyts
A: hw mnE ppl S d resRv8n 4 sir
B: jst 1. watz d r%m trff
A: yr rm S 3 K per nyt. undR wot nAm do I tAk d resRv8n sir
B: Mohan Singh
A: cUd u spel yr lst nme 4 me sir
B: suR. S-I-N-G-H
A: c%d i hav yor contak # sir
B: yes. my ceL # iz 7609889011
A: thk U sir. l%kin 4ward 2 CN U. hav a nIs dA
B: U 2.
As mentioned earlier, students would need to pay attention to how they will expand the words and spell them; they would also need to pay attention to the punctuation rules in order to score well in the test. So the exercise is not just about understanding grammar rules, but understanding language in its totality.
This is how your students should translate (!) or decode the above.
A: Good Morning. Welcome to Woodlands Hotel.
B: Good Morning. I’d like to make a reservation for the third weekend of October.
A: Just a minute, sir. We’ve several rooms available for that particular weekend. And what’s the exact date of your arrival?
B: The 16th.
A: How many days will you require the room, sir?
B: I’ll be staying for two nights.
A: How many people is the reservation for, sir?
B: Just one. What’s the room tariff?
A: Your room is three thousand per night. Under what name do I take the reservation, sir?
B: Mohan Singh.
A: Could you spell your last name for me, sir?
B: Sure. S-I-N-G-H.
A: Could I have your contact number, sir?
B: Yes. My cell number is 7609889011.
A: Thank you, sir. Looking forward to seeing you. Have a nice day.
B: You too.
The exercise is more demanding than the conventional correct the following sentences or fill in the blanks with the correct word from the brackets/the box. Students really need to make an effort to bring the exercise to its logical conclusion.
Have you had trouble in getting students to commit to memory a poem or even certain lines that you think are important enough to be quoted in an answer in order to elaborate a point? Well, convert the poem into the SMS language so that students learn the spellings, the lines and well…the poem itself without the impression that they are doing a mundane task like memorizing it.
What is the well-known poem below that makes its appearance in almost all middle school textbooks in India?
whuz woods dEz R I tink I knO
hs hows iz n d viLaG though
he wiL not c me stopping hEr
2 watch Hs woods fiL ^ w snO
Yes, it is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. The lines quoted above are:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
For teachers who are not as SMS savvy as their students, http://transl8it.com/ is a website that helps you translate wholesome English into funky SMS English. Seek the aid of this website in order to get your tests in place. It is easier than trying to figure out the shortcut language!
Since SMS is here to stay, why not we as teachers use it to our own benefit by making exercises and testing a little different and stimulating? R we aL set?
The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.
