New Zealand students can use "text speak" on exams

sschaula · Post by **sschaula** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:02 am

From http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/1 ... index.html

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand's high school students will be able to use "text-speak" -- the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers -- in national exams this year, officials said.

Text-speak, a second language for thousands of teens, uses abbreviated words and phrases such as "txt" for "text", "lol" for "laughing out loud" or "lots of love," and "CU" for "see you."

The move has already divided students and educators who fear it could damage the English language.

New Zealand's Qualifications Authority said Friday that it still strongly discourages students from using anything other than full English, but that credit will be given if the answer "clearly shows the required understanding," even if it contains text-speak.

The authority's deputy chief executive for qualifications, Bali Haque, said students should aim to make their answers as clear as possible.

Confident that those grading papers would understand answers written in text-speak, Haque stressed that in some exams, including English, text abbreviations would be penalized.

Post Primary Teachers' Association President Debbie Te Whaiti said the authority's move reflects the classroom situation.

Teachers would have concerns if text slang became acceptable in everyday written language in classrooms, she said.

Critics said the National Certificate of Educational Achievement or NCEA, the main qualification for high school students, would be degraded by the authority allowing text speak use in exams.

Internet blogger Phil Stevens was not amused by the announcement. "nzqa[New Zealand Qualifications Authority]: u mst b joking," Stevens wrote. "or r u smoking sumthg?"

- lolz, ttyl.

millipodium · Post by **millipodium** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:05 am

THis seems so silly since most essay questions aren't really lol funny.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 7:52 am

plz. Teh world will lolz @ u.

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:33 am

New Zealand is in many ways a great place politically, but that is just idiotic.

Ryan Rudolph · Post by **Ryan Rudolph** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:05 am

That's lovely, literary patterns such as this one will probably go on to create a generation of adults that communicate like teenage girls on MSN...

omg! a boy just knocked at my door!... lol...I'm so nervous...brb.

just another lazy, infantile and limited way of communicating that will probably become the norm for decades to come.

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:08 am

Yeah, but hey, it's all good, right?

Elizabeth Isabelle · Post by **Elizabeth Isabelle** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:32 am

It'll probably go the way of ebonics.

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:37 am

Don't be pushing me into no jive......

Elizabeth Isabelle · Post by **Elizabeth Isabelle** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:58 am

Bul-lee dat!

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:33 am

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:It'll probably go the way of ebonics.

For the record I've spent about 4 hours in the last month discussing ebonics in a classroom with a linguistics professor harping on and on about how it is a legitimate language and a legitimate movement and people who disagree are racist and just don't understand anything about languages...

"the way of ebonics" is not disappearing. :(

-Rory

Trevor Salyzyn · Post by **Trevor Salyzyn** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:39 am

give a professor a topic, and he'll bore you to tears with it

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:48 am

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:give a professor a topic, and he'll bore you to tears with it

Yeah, but in general I would have expected academics to mock ebonics, not lecture me for disrespecting it, and give me a 3 day lecture about how it's "not just lazy english - they use a lot of the grammar from west african languages!"

Because let me tell you what the real chances are that some punk kid in 1990 still had remnants of West African grammar left instead of just being lazy in a way that happened to correspond with another language. Especially given how many languages exist in west africa...

Dan Rowden · Post by **Dan Rowden** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:55 am

The line the Prof is pushing, aside from being bullshit, doesn't seem to be much of an advertisement for West African languages.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:03 pm

Dan Rowden wrote:The line the Prof is pushing, aside from being bullshit, doesn't seem to be much of an advertisement for West African languages.

Yeah, well, if you look back far enough in academic literature (and by far enough I mean... 30 years) you can find all sorts of information to back up the idea that Africans are stupid. Including information about their gramatical systems being simple.

Doesn't take much work to dig that up, plaster it on top of people currently being stupid and call it academics... it's why academics are such bullshit. :(

The main argument seems to be about missing verb tenses though "I be runnin" and saying that legitimate languages have different verb tenses than one another - spanish has several different futures, for example.

It's still bullshit, and lazy though.

beebuddy · Post by **beebuddy** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:04 pm

Rory wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:The line the Prof is pushing, aside from being bullshit, doesn't seem to be much of an advertisement for West African languages.
Yeah, well, if you look back far enough in academic literature (and by far enough I mean... 30 years) you can find all sorts of information to back up the idea that Africans are stupid. Including information about their gramatical systems being simple.

Doesn't take much work to dig that up, plaster it on top of people currently being stupid and call it academics... it's why academics are such bullshit. :(

The main argument seems to be about missing verb tenses though "I be runnin" and saying that legitimate languages have different verb tenses than one another - spanish has several different futures, for example.

It's still bullshit, and lazy though.

It's a good thing "Guns, Germs and Steel" was written!

Jamesh · Post by **Jamesh** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:15 pm

The English language is somewhat outdated.

I would like dictionaries to be rewritten to minimise the number of letters used. ie be could easily become b. 'Thought' should become 'Thort' or 'ffort', their/there should become thir/ther.

This is the age of information and communication, and it will be more and more so as the years go by - we need to simplify and condense the dud language as much as possible.

Shortened text versions are a sign that the language is not keeping up with the practical needs of its users.

Elizabeth Isabelle · Post by **Elizabeth Isabelle** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:35 pm

Ebonics does not always shorten things, for example a case quarter is just a quarter. Sometimes it's just intentionally mangled pronunciation just to cause a distinction - the example I used above "Bul-lee dat!" is just a mangled version of "believe that."

I have some understanding of the need felt by the culture to establish a separate identity. Here, read this. It is true, and it's something that most white people nowadays don't know about, but most People of Color in America do. Ignorance of the white people is part of the problem.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:44 pm

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:Ebonics does not always shorten things, for example a case quarter is just a quarter. Sometimes it's just intentionally mangled pronunciation just to cause a distinction - the example I used above "Bul-lee dat!" is just a mangled version of "believe that."

I have some understanding of the need felt by the culture to establish a separate identity. Here, read this. It is true, and it's something that most white people nowadays don't know about, but most People of Color do. Ignorance of the white people is part of the problem.

Intentional mispronunciation is lazy.
They can create an identity based on language; that's fine. We all do it, really to one degree or another... There's a difference between having a coloquial language people use and being incapable of speaking standard English.

This was the argument of Ebonics; it should be treated as a foriegn language and students should be enrolled in ESL classes and treated as though English weren't their native language because the entire culture had gotten so lazy they failed to teach their children English.

I speak coloquially... you know my grammar and spelling amongst my friends is pretty bad... but if I need to turn in a paper or deal with the welfare idiots, I have the ability to turn around and use English as well as anyone else.

beebuddy · Post by **beebuddy** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:47 pm

The funny thing about this is that ebonics is generally considered to be the face of linguisitic evolution among academics. So there.

Elizabeth Isabelle · Post by **Elizabeth Isabelle** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:24 pm

Rory wrote: This was the argument of Ebonics; it should be treated as a foriegn language and students should be enrolled in ESL classes and treated as though English weren't their native language

Well, that might actually be the right thing to do to an extent. The culture that uses ebonics also tends to look down on education as a way of "trying to be white." Since English is the official language of the United Sates, I think that to be passed to the next grade, a kid should be able to communicate in English at the appropriate level for that grade. If they need special classes to accomplish this, which they probably do, fine. The results are what's important.

What opportunities can some kid have if he can't even speak the primary language well enough to hold a legal job when he grows up? It isn't his fault that he got born onto that situation. I'd rather help a little kid than be mugged because that's the only thing he learned how to do.

Kids with ambition want to "be somebody." It's hard enough with degenerating family structures to keep kids out of gangs, but if the only way a kid can make a name for himself is to be a Blood or a Crypt with the most kills, he'll sure try. I'd rather give these kids a shot at being the President or winning a Nobel Prize, even if it means giving them a leg up where their parents couldn't.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:37 pm

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote: Well, that might actually be the right thing to do to an extent. The culture that uses ebonics also tends to look down on education as a way of "trying to be white."

Well, this is an entirely separate problem, really. And one I don't really have the energy to get into.

Since English is the official language of the United Sates, I think that to be passed to the next grade, a kid should be able to communicate in English at the appropriate level for that grade. If they need special classes to accomplish this, which they probably do, fine. The results are what's important.

Incorrect. Actually there is no official language in the US. 28 states have English as an official language, but nationally there isn't one. English is the lingua franca - the commonly used language in the US.

However, I agree that kids should be required to communicate in English in order to pass through school.

-Rory

Philosophaster · Post by **Philosophaster** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:39 pm

Spoken language is almost always "non-standard" and disobeys at least a few rules of grammar. There have always been dialects that make their speakers nearly incomprehensible to "outsiders" and words used in ways that only certain groups of people understand, and in that sense "Ebonics" is nothing unique.

The real problem is when people cannot *write* English in a way that is understandable to as many other English speakers as possible. The whole point of writing is to make language static, enabling us to transmit information across wider reaches of time and space. To encourage or permit the use of "non-standard" forms is to act against this purpose.

Elizabeth Isabelle · Post by **Elizabeth Isabelle** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:42 pm

Rory wrote: Incorrect. Actually there is no official language in the US. 28 states have English as an official language, but nationally there isn't one. English is the lingua franca - the commonly used language in the US.

Thank you for the correction.

Philosophaster · Post by **Philosophaster** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:42 pm

Not learning to read is another huge problem. Most books, whatever their faults, use "standard English." People who read enough books will know this form of English just fine.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 1:45 pm

Philosophaster wrote: The real problem is when people cannot *write* English in a way that is understandable to as many other English speakers as possible. The whole point of writing is to make language static, enabling us to transmit information across wider reaches of time and space. To encourage or permit the use of "non-standard" forms is to act against this purpose.

Yeah, the problem isn't the existance of the non-standard form. It's that these kids aren't being taught standard English. They can't "code-switch" between the two, as any other group of people might.

I can IM in slangy, bad grammar, idiocy... and simultaneously write a paper in academic language.

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New Zealand students can use "text speak" on exams

New Zealand students can use "text speak" on exams

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