A New Type of Literacy: Texting in and Out of the Classroom
David Crystal deals with the
controversial subject of how the language of text messaging can impact literacy
as it becomes more and more pervasive in society in his chapter “The hype about
texting.” After giving a brief history of the growth of text messaging as a
medium, he highlights many of the negative views that crop up around text
messaging such as “There
is a widely voiced
concern that the practice is fostering
a decline in literacy. And some even think it is harming language as a whole”
(7). In many ways I can understand where
this ideology comes from and why it might be a concern.
Before
coming to graduate school, I taught remedial English to high school freshmen.
These students were severely below standard when it came to writing and
reading. However, they did certainly know how to use their phones to
communicate with their friends quickly and, I must admit, frequently while I was
trying to teach them the skills of formal classroom writing (despite the clear
policies I had in place against this). Reading their essays for an entire year,
it would be an easy assumption for me to make that their constant reliance on
cell phone messaging and lack of interest in the rules of grammar and usage
when sending these messages was at fault.
Despite
how easy that assumption would be though, I know for a fact that the reality is
far more complicated than this. For one thing, as Crystal points out in response
to these panicking claims that the cry of new technology bringing the death of
literacy as we know it is far from a new idea shown when he says “My bank
balance would have started to grow with the arrival in the Middle Ages of
printing, thought by many to be the invention of the devil because it would put
all kinds of false opinions into people’s minds. It would have increased with
the arrival of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting, each of which
generated short-lived fears that the fabric of society was under threat” (9).
He shows that this was the reaction to all kinds of media from books to audio forms
of media and when put in those terms the idea seems a little ridiculous.
Furthermore, anyone who has studied education for any period of time would have
come across numerous studies about what causes the achievement gap when it came
to students in school. It is an extremely complicated issue whose originating source
is not solely texting and even if it were – I am certain that the highest
performing students in any given school were texting just as much as the lower
performing students in a classroom.
By the
end of his piece, Crystal touches on a point that suggests that texting may in
reality actually help develop literacy and this can certainly be seen reflected
in new types of classroom lessons that are cropping up that involve taking literary
texts and recreating scenes in the medium of text message. For example these
scenes recreated from Macbeth: (I’ll put the images here in the actual blog
post)
While
these are images I searched and used as a starting discussion point in my own
classroom, you can also provide students with blank templates and have them
summarize their own scenes between characters in the form of text messages.
This then becomes an example of text messages being used to promote literacy
rather than hinder it. Students use a new skill of translating older literature
using one dated kind of English into a more modern mode of communication
without losing the original meaning. This then is in reality a higher form of
literacy than those panicking give younger generations credit for.
David Crystal deals with the
controversial subject of how the language of text messaging can impact literacy
as it becomes more and more pervasive in society in his chapter “The hype about
texting.” After giving a brief history of the growth of text messaging as a
medium, he highlights many of the negative views that crop up around text
messaging such as “There
is a widely voiced
concern that the practice is fostering
a decline in literacy. And some even think it is harming language as a whole”
(7). In many ways I can understand where
this ideology comes from and why it might be a concern.
Before
coming to graduate school, I taught remedial English to high school freshmen.
These students were severely below standard when it came to writing and
reading. However, they did certainly know how to use their phones to
communicate with their friends quickly and, I must admit, frequently while I was
trying to teach them the skills of formal classroom writing (despite the clear
policies I had in place against this). Reading their essays for an entire year,
it would be an easy assumption for me to make that their constant reliance on
cell phone messaging and lack of interest in the rules of grammar and usage
when sending these messages was at fault.
Despite
how easy that assumption would be though, I know for a fact that the reality is
far more complicated than this. For one thing, as Crystal points out in response
to these panicking claims that the cry of new technology bringing the death of
literacy as we know it is far from a new idea shown when he says “My bank
balance would have started to grow with the arrival in the Middle Ages of
printing, thought by many to be the invention of the devil because it would put
all kinds of false opinions into people’s minds. It would have increased with
the arrival of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting, each of which
generated short-lived fears that the fabric of society was under threat” (9).
He shows that this was the reaction to all kinds of media from books to audio forms
of media and when put in those terms the idea seems a little ridiculous.
Furthermore, anyone who has studied education for any period of time would have
come across numerous studies about what causes the achievement gap when it came
to students in school. It is an extremely complicated issue whose originating source
is not solely texting and even if it were – I am certain that the highest
performing students in any given school were texting just as much as the lower
performing students in a classroom.
By the
end of his piece, Crystal touches on a point that suggests that texting may in
reality actually help develop literacy and this can certainly be seen reflected
in new types of classroom lessons that are cropping up that involve taking literary
texts and recreating scenes in the medium of text message. For example these
scenes recreated from Macbeth:
While
these are images I searched and used as a starting discussion point in my own
classroom, you can also provide students with blank templates and have them
summarize their own scenes between characters in the form of text messages.
This then becomes an example of text messages being used to promote literacy
rather than hinder it. Students use a new skill of translating older literature
using one dated kind of English into a more modern mode of communication
without losing the original meaning. This then is in reality a higher form of
literacy than those panicking give younger generations credit for.
Some final questions upon finishing
the article I had were:
With the introduction of more sophisticated
(and almost aggressive) auto correct as seen in iPhones and Androids of today,
how does this impact the argument that texting language is ruining the English
language? Doesn't the main worries of critics change?
I suggested one way that I have
seen used to bring text messaging language into the classroom to promote
literacy, are there others?
I greatly appreciate this early (and thoughtful) blog posting, Rose! The Macbeth texting exchange is brilliant - seems like such a great way to get students to "adapt" a text to a new medium, all the while teaching comprehension skills. I have been using this Crystal article in classes since it was published in 2008 and I think so much of it holds up, even within the ever increasing market for such text messaging services. What's especially intrigued me is the way that language had NOT changed. Sure, we have all sorts of acronyms now from LOL to TFW, but early critics worried that texting would lead to all sorts of abbreviated language. For instance, I'd be curious to know how many people actively use abbreviations such as "u" for "you." I'd be willing to bet that most of us don't do that, but then again I'm a late adopter of texting and have never been interested in using such shorthand. On the other hand, I do wonder how the culture of texting has changed our communication climate. After all, texts are intended to be responded to ASAP and with the advent of Snapchat, which encourages even quicker replies, I wonder how the speed of our interaction is affecting the quality of our interaction. Also, the demand to be at the ready means that downtime or "tech-free" time is reduced. This probably leads to more agile language use, but I wonder what the toll has been psychologically.
ReplyDeleteRose, I need to first commend you on finding those delightful examples. How I wish that had been a part of my class when I had to read Macbeth years ago! In response to your question, I actually just mentioned in one of my annotations that I find the use of texting has become much more grammatically sound in younger generations and has declined in older generations (ironic, isn't it?) When I receive texts from grandparents or aunts and uncles, they typically use the slang that texting has helped to create, and which David Crystal and you mention about the decline of literacy skills. I do believe that auto correct and other programs such as swype have helped to eliminate the need for slang terms and have encouraged users to text with proper grammar rather than words that are constantly not recognized by the memory of swype or auto correct. Similarly, Adam Banks brought up fascinating points about how writing and speaking must constantly be re-purposed due to the use of new methods and technology, which goes hand in hand with the idea of slang terms used in texting. It's not that those who use it are in danger of becoming illiterate but rather they are learning to remix and re-purpose the information already given to them with the new information presented. It's finding a balance between the two and then learning how each impacts the other that can determine the usefulness between the two methods.
ReplyDeleteRose, your example of Macbeth told via text message is a great idea! I am inclined to agree with you that students who can "re-create" a scene from Macbeth, or "re-tell" it using text messages, can show a greater understanding of Shakespeare's use of non-traditional prose than a simple summary of the text. Whenever I teach Shakespeare, I can usually tell when a student has looked up a simple summary of the text itself instead of having read it and attempted to offer their own understanding in a paper. Having them use modern day texting language forces them to be able to equate the meaning of Shakespeare's language and word choice to that of their own. You example of Macbeth is a possible example of when Crystal refers to texting and if, "...it is causing problems, we need to be able to manage them. And if it is providing benefits, we need to know how to build on them"(7). This seems to be a benefit of text language and how we can use it and "build" on it. I also think it is interesting that the biggest critique of text messaging is that it reduces the integrity of language by using short-hand for words and meaning, (i.e "u" for "you" or various acronyms "FOMO") and thinking that " 'The end is near' "(Crystal 8). However, these abbreviations were intended to save space characters before iMessage was included with iPhones. This means that texters, (is that a word?), were forced to invent these acronyms that would be easily recognizable or communicated as representing words or phrases. The fear of texting often reminds me of the fear of books instead of scrolls, or the printing press. Yet, there is still a part of me, when I am teaching and I see all students struggle with not having their phone out, or not be on checking social media for a merely fifty minutes of class time, I can't help but think that this immediacy of text messaging and an automatic light up screen of a cell phone is a concern. The iPhone has an option that you can have your text messages on "Read" at a specific time, or just "Delivered". I will never put my phone on "Read" again because when I briefly had it turned on, I was constantly asked about why I hadn't responded. Text messaging expects a kind of immediate response because it is assumed that it takes so little time to respond, (despite the multi-page text messages that are often sent that probably deserve at least a phone call or in person conversation), when really, it shouldn't matter if you respond right away or later in the afternoon/evening when you are home and have time--it is as if you should always have time to respond. I think text message will always be seen as both a great development in technology, while also remaining a valid concern for various reasons.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate the Macbeth example given here. To answer your question, I don't think that language is being ruined with the advent of new auto-correcting technologies. I don't distinguish between widely known and accepted acronyms used throughout history and the shortening of words via text messaging for efficiency. If anything, the auto-correct feature makes it easier to write in full sentences while on the go. It's all about the reason we are communicating and the tool we are using to do so. Like Crystal says, texting was originally only 25 characters long. It was never meant to be used with such high standards as far as grammar goes. Also, language is always in flux. New words get added and others get taken out. It's the natural progression of language.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using the text format to tell a story. It works particularly well for archaic forms of literature; not only Shakespeare but anything that may use outdated English and consist of a more complex grammatical structure. I think that by allowing students to work with a genre of writing they are already familiar with (i.e. texting) they would be able to engage with texts in more beneficial ways. For example, I know, based on experience, that a lot of new comers to Shakespeare simply dismiss him because they do not already possess the knowledge to navigate through his writing. Perhaps though, if introduction courses used genres that are written in a way new students can understand and appreciate, the students would begin to enjoy the stories rather than automatically dismiss them.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the chapter from David Crystals book. I am a big history person so it was very interesting to read about the nascent period of texting. I have never been an avid texter, although I definitely understand the appeal and convenience of it. In my opinion, the usurpation of other forms of communicative writing such as letter writing by text messaging has in a sense deromanticized the act of receiving a message—I get really excited when I receive a letter from someone in the mail, whereas receiving a text message evokes almost no emotional response at this point—however, I do not think that texting is, “fostering a decline in literacy” (Crystal,7). As you sagaciously remarked Rose, “[You are] certain that the highest performing students in any given school [are] texting just as much as the lower performing students in a classroom.” I agree with you. There does not seem to be anything inherently bad about texting.
Honestly, other than taking away some of the pleasure of receiving a message, I do not see how texting could be considered damaging to literacy. I love features like spell check and auto correct; granted the latter can be slightly annoying depending on how it autocorrects the word. I am prone to make a lot of spelling mistakes—even as I write this spell check has helped me. Sometimes I wonder how my writing would look without it. The one problem these features may have is they may make people less likely to work on their spelling or grammar because they know their minor mistakes will be corrected.
I'm so glad you used that text translation of Macbeth as an example because I actually did a similar thing for a course I took as an undergrad, here at UMB. The assignment was to draft an adaption of a play, from stage design to script. My play was "The Man of Mode" by George Etherege. In considering how I would adapt it, I thought about the pettiness of the characters, the obsession with social status in England during the 1660s Restoration period, and how that could translate well into a modern day high school.
ReplyDeleteSo for the script I made some text conversations between the characters and it really helped me understand the essence of what they were saying. For students, I definitely think using this medium to summarize or paraphrase more verbose works would be a fun exercise. They could change their contact names and group up with classmates and screenshot their summaries for an assignment. That way, they get a feel for the back and forth of the play, because it can be easy to forget that the lines are spoken to each other in succession.
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ReplyDeleteI really liked this post! Good Job Rose! When you were talking about their dependence on texting and their lack of fluency in formal english, it brings a question in my mind that has been burning since I declared my major: Is formal English losing its relevance? You promoted the understanding of Shakespeare's Macbeth though texting from the images in the post and I really like that. I like the fact that language is evolving to fit the time it is being used in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, In regards to the issue you faced in the classroom with regards tp students with poor grammar, I think its a little unfair to ask them to learn a language that they do not use outside of the classroom and have them become good at it with limited usage. In my opinion. I think that academia should take note of these changes and realise that language is only one half of the process of sharing ideas and that there are many other modes of sharing the same thoughts.
This point is all the more relevant given the fact that students entering the world of academia are getting younger. Before, academia was restricted to the priviledged few who were more than happy to abide by these linguistic rules. Now that higher education has become more of a common commodity than a priviledge (though that is stretching it a bit too far), it is fair to acknowledge hat teaching cannot be done in vaccumm. Methods such as texting can be very useful in the classroom. Texting language can also be used! It might even light the student's interest in the subjec as well.
Hi Rose. Thanks for this post and your suggestion of the great texting exercise! I especially love your reminder that "...the highest performing students in any given school were texting just as much as the lower performing students in a classroom." I think this is a really important point that you've stressed. It's unfair to attribute someone's achievement level to the amount of time they spend using their cell phone, and though it may be true that students who use their phones regularly in class learn less, I find it much more useful to think about how we can encourage more dynamic learning through the incorporation of these technologies. A lot of my experience with using technology in the classroom comes from my having taught a student who was nearly nonverbal due to anxiety. Teaching this student made me consider the ways that I may have been shutting down communication among students by asking that they put their phones away. Instead, I used resources like Edmodo (which is designed to resemble a Facebook page) for students to make posts and comments. For these matters, their use of "texting" language wasn't really a concern of mine, as I was more interested in engaging all students in multiple modes of communication.
ReplyDeleteAnother advantage I find in the incorporation of texting language into the classroom is its potential for helping students advocate their socio-emotional wellbeing without having to do so using "real" language. I started to use "emoji check-ins" (steal away if you're interested--students loved it) in which students checked in with me by selecting an emoji to represent their current wellbeing. While I could expect some students to be able to properly convey their wellbeing with spoken or written language, providing students with this quick alternative alleviated stress for many of my students. 10/10 would recommend!
I love the idea of emoji check-ins and I also bookmarked the Edmodo site. I really appreciate the possible resources for teaching thank you!
DeleteHi Rose! I know it has been said before in the other comments, but the text message example is brilliant! Having students use their knowledge of technology and texting is far more better than taking that skill, that they have developed and adapted to over the years, away and claiming that it hinders more than helps. I do agree as well that there are cons to texting, having seen some students with papers that have 'u' instead of 'you.' Despite this, I don't believe that texting hinders the student's ability to become properly literate. Going off of what Penelope had said in her comment, it is true that because there was a limited amount of space to send a message, people turned to using a shorter way to write. They turned our language into a whole new one. If that isn't inventive, I don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteTo look at your questions, I think that auto correct can be a great thing, but also has some bad. There have been many times when I am writing, I rely on spell check or auto correct too much. It has become a problem where students sometimes think that they don't even need to worry about something as tedious as spelling because they have the technology to do it for them. On the other hand, the auto correct and spell checker can help students see how something is spelled or that they are using the wrong 'there.' I think that they're are two sides to this coin that critics simply love to eat up.
I think that what is tough now is to look at ways in which we can promote and use the texting language into the classroom. Having the Macbeth example is a great one, but it is hard to think of another. Maybe a simple class activity of pointing out different types of abbreviations, "translating" them, and then challenging the students to go without them. Something like that could show the students how to formally write, while making it fun and interesting.
Like everyone else here, I love the example of the Macbeth text assignment. I also want to suggest that if this article were written 10 years later, Crystal might have included Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook/ Facebook Chat, since these social media spaces are places that we might regularly see the same kinds of short, informal messages, though they're often more public. What if the witches had a Facebook group chat with Macbeth, and one without him?
ReplyDeleteThis one is admittedly stolen from a Composition instructor that I observed. She was teaching her students about genre, and after asking the class to read a scholarly article about plagiarism, she put them into groups and asked them to communicate the key ideas from the article in the form of Twitter rants, Facebook posts, Amazon reviews, and text message conversations. Like the Macbeth assignment, this exercise takes advantage of the knowledge students already have about the norms in all of these digital spaces, which are very different from those of a scholarly article. This helps students to learn about the conventions of the form they're "translating" from (scholarly article, novel, play) as well as the one they're translating to. Aside from being funny and engaging, it forces the students to identify the most important or compelling parts of an article (or novel, play, short story) and put it into language they might actually use if they were trying to tell a friend about what they've read. Ultimately this is just an extension of the exercise Rose has already suggested.
As for auto correct, I have noticed some anxiety that seems to stem from a fear that people will "forget" how to spell correctly, or never learn how, but that seems absurd. There are incredibly intelligent people who are terrible spellers - science has shown that spelling isn't linked to how "smart" you are, and auto correct/ spell check may allow for some of those of those bad spellers to not be judged by something so superficial. If writers have to worry less about things like spelling, they can spend more time focusing on the content of their work - which I would consider to be much more important.
Like almost everyone who commented before me, I love your text-MacBeth exercise. It reminded me of an app I see advertised a lot on other apps--it's called something like TextingStory or Hooked, and they use videos of a text conversation to tell stories. I haven't used the app or even seen an ad for it recently, but it's interesting to think how it and your exercise shows that texting hasn't ruined literacy but instead made a new one; texting not only allows people to communicate easily and quickly, but can act as a vehicle for other kinds of communication. Although I don't think the app is doing amazing story telling, it is able to use the text chat and its particularities (a message being typed, sent, read) to create new meanings for readers/audiences--e.g., watching the other phone type out a long message creates suspense and seeing a read receipt without a response makes you wonder what happened on the other end. Because of this, I'd argue that there's definitely more to be excited about than anxious for with the proliferation of texting.
ReplyDeleteAs Ryan discussed, auto-correct creates an interesting dynamic of benefitting online texts'/posts'/comments' spelling but also perhaps hurting someone's own spelling abilities if they grow reliant on the corrections. I think both are true. Though they may be a little annoying, I find the mistaken-auto-corrections to be exciting because they're something that almost everyone has experienced--who hasn't had their phone change a word to "duck?" This is exciting because it creates shared experiences that can be used elsewhere; if we've all dealt with the strange occurrence of our phone changing a swear word to something else, that's something we can all relate with or laugh at, and that opens up new avenues of communication.
Great stuff, Rose! I was particularly interested in the point you made regarding the numerous potential causes that create the performance gap within our school systems. It is almost laughable that texting could be at the core of or a catalyst to further widen such a disparity. Crystal's point, that you reference, of society's almost expected response of fear to any new technological advancement in communication backed up this point quite well. You really disrupted the anti-text movement's stance by pointing out of that it is not just the low performing students that are using text messaging but the high performing students as well.
ReplyDeleteAs many above feel, the Macbeth "text messaging translation" is a wonderful example of how to make complex, antiquated language accessible to a contemporary audience through the language of their new technology. I have seen written publications that are designed to be more reader-friendly to a contemporary audience but this is the first example I have come across that directly uses text messaging to accomplish its goal.
As someone who has no experience within a present day classroom, I have a question for you: do you find that text messaging, cell phone dependency, and immediate access to entertainment create a distracted classroom audience? You allude to competing for students' attention with their phones in your post but I constantly hear that the younger the student the shorter the attention span. What did your experience in the classroom tell you about these societal fears?
I found in some ways it definitely does created a distracted audience as you put it - however, I do not think that is necessarily the worst thing. Students who are engaged and invested in a lesson will not pull out their phones because they are interested in what is going on. That may sound like a flowery teacher saying but I find it to be true and as education moves further and further into valuing hands on experiences over classroom lecture time lessons become more engaging. You as a teacher can also see extremely quickly when your lesson is not working and when students are not engaged by if they are trying to sneakily (they are not sneaky) pull out their phones to stare at snapchat.
DeleteSo yes, attention spans are very short in a classroom and that is probably not helped by the immediacy of technology in their lives, but it is a challenge we can face as teachers by working to make better lessons that students will be engaged with and actually learn from. And really, shouldn't we have been doing that anyway regardless of how long students attention spans are? I know I hated listening to lectures in elementary school all day even before cell phones and learned very little from them.
Rose:
ReplyDeleteI love the quote that you selected from the third paragraph of the Crystal article where he comments on the historical analogues to the crisis around texting. As you pointed out, he comments on the Medieval crisis surrounding the widespread use and circulation of print for the first time. As Crystal says, people thought printing to the "the invention of the devil because it would put all kinds of false opinions into people's minds." This is interesting as it connects very nicely with the reading from Plato's "Phaedrus" we also read for this week's class. Plato, through Socrates is arguing that writing is inherently dangerous in its permanency and lack of autonomy in defense of its own content. In other words, a person can read a text and completely misunderstand or misconstrue its content because the original writer or thinker is not there to explain the meaning. Words and writing thus have no inherent meaning and thus can be turned to nefarious purposes.
So, as we can see, this fear of the written word, for is is a fear goes back even farther than the Middle Ages to Classical Athens and likely even before. Crystal is certainly aware of this; throughout his piece he makes certain references to mythology. For instance, he says "...hardly an reports provide details of what exactly happens to language when people create texts. As a result, a huge popular mythology has grown up, in which exaggerated and distorted accounts of what youngsters are believed to do when they text has fueled prophecies of impending linguistic disaster" (7). Just as mythology is used throughout history to explain that which we don't understand, we mythologize changes in language use as we do not yet understand their ramifications for humankind and human society. Just as Plato had a fear of writing as he did not necessarily understand its future societal and cultural implications we have a fear of text messaging. The future will reveal its ultimate place. in the evolution of written communication.
Love this MACBETH example!
ReplyDeleteI think this fear of texting feels very irrational — students throughout all of history brought outside experiences and skill to classroom, and I love the idea of harnessing that to study English. ESPECIALLY using an exercise that would require some sort of translation — I don’t think it can be underestimated that asking students to use and re-think their own self-knowledge and skills, like texting, in academic setting can make them connect not only with the text in a greater way, but trust the instructor more. If a teacher is trying to share literature with students, but they’re also interested in how modern students process, I think the students will feel more heard. This is my experience with middle/high school/college students. When I include memes for younger students, when I allowed an entire summary of a play in emojis in our drama program, I’m creating a report with my students that I find valuable in itself, even apart from just technology. I think we lose something when we set out to reject a part of youth culture that we don’t understand, instead of thinking about how to use it for learning.