I was reading a story today in one of the Sunday papers under the headline "English GCSE? It's just 2EZ." The story was about a new English exam that includes a section on the grammar of mobile phone texting.
The article details plans by the Assessment Qualifications Alliance (AQA) to introduce the test that could earn up to ten percent of students overall GCSE mark.
Obviously, the plans have come under attacks from various objectors claiming that the plans reveal a "dumbing down" of the subject. A direct quote from the story reads: "Next year pupils will be tested on text messaging as part of their English GCSEs."
Like many people who read this, I thought the concept of teaching text message lingo in schools was ridiculous so I decided to research a bit more into it.
I started by visiting the AQA website in an attempt to find out more about the plans. I came across the document detailing the course outline and I found out a few interesting things.
Firstly, the module is optional so teachers can choose not to teach it if they wish which wasn't mentioned at all in the newspaper article.
Secondly and I quote from the AQA web site: "This topic deals with new technologies that alter the demarcation between traditional ares of spoken and written language - MSN, text speak etc." - (http://store.aqa.org.uk/resourceZone/pdf/english/AQA-ENGLANGAB-W-TRB-U3ASLS.PDF)" p2.
So the idea that schools would in fact be 'teaching' text speak is a myth. From what is detailed on the AQA website, it appears that that they would actually be attempting to highlight the differences that exist between 'proper' English and text speak. Now maybe it is just me but surely that is a good thing to be teaching to children?
Personally, I'm all for it!
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