Letter to the editor - Twtr? It's majorly bad!

In this article, Laura Clark inaccurately explains the effects of texting towards one’s language abilities. The author, Laura Clark, blames technology for “eroding hard-learned skills” in areas such as spelling and grammar. She believes that text speak “erodes pupils language skills”, which I disagree with. Technology is a great learning tool for students to use as it improves the student’s language due to dictionaries, auto-correct, and the whole internet, which are available to a student in just a couple of seconds or are a few clicks away. Laura Clark goes on to say that many youngsters are not “reading in the same way”, and spend their time on social media, making her wonder how much new vocabulary youngsters are exposed to. I fully disagree that social media hinders kids of being exposed to new vocabulary. With social media, kids are able to take in more information and vocabulary when compared to reading a book as there is a large variety of posts and comments, which only betters ones language ability. Schools should not see technology and Social Media as a hindrance to the language skills of an individual, but as a helpful and effective tool when trying to expand a student’s vocabulary as well as their grammatical skill. Coming back to my initial statement, text speak does not “erode pupils language skills”, and much rather expands pupils language skills. Texting is an expansion of an individuals language skills, and should not be seen as a damaging influence on one’s language Ability. Learning the different vocabulary in text speak, such as gr8, m8 and innit, should be seen as learning a different dialect or even a new language when compared to the language used in school. I believe that saying text speak is bad, is like saying that being bilingual and knowing a different language is bad. Being bilingual has been proven to have a positive effect on a person’s cognitive skills, thus improve your language skills. Due to this, I believe that this article inaccurately represents the effects of texting and technology on a person’s language abilities as it does not erode language skills which were previously acquired.