Wednesday, April 6, 2011

David Crystal on It's Only a Theory S01E02


This video's so good I have to save it somewhere! I even made a friend who studies nothing about language to watch it today - and he found it great :) I am not quite sure about his statement "the earlier starting to use a mobile phone, the faster/better the language development" - have to read a bit more on that to see whether there are evidence supporting the statement. It seems a little bit unrealistic for me. On the other hand, I don't really think texting has made people less punctual these days - it's just what happens in the society. Even if text was never ever invented, people can still call up when they are going to be late - not necessarily the fault of text messages.

7 comments:

  1. Minji, really good point! I think that using a mobile phone in conjunction with formal literacy lessons are beneficial but students must first learn the proper language and grammar rules before they use textspeak. He was certainly enthusiastic :)

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  2. Wow, sounds like this video is starting to spread virally ... !

    As regards punctuality, I think you're right that it's not actually the main issue. What researchers have noted is that more and more of us engage in what's sometimes called 'hypercoordination', where we co-ordinate meeting times and places on the run ... basically, we gradually approach those we are meeting timewise and placewise, all the while co-ordinating the actual meeting through text messages or the occasional phone call. 10 years ago you had to plan to meet a person at X cafe at X time ... now you can just plan to meet in Mt Lawley on Friday night, for example, and sort out the rest of the details at the time. It gives us much more flexibility that we used to have.

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  3. Minji - I am enjoying your blogg.

    Like you, I also enjoyed the video of professor Crystal and think I will try and find another one of his to share and embed in my blog.

    I am also fasicintated that you say most of your Junior High schooling was done with a smart board. In my practicum I did most of it on a chalk blboardd. I am lookiking forward to being able to learn to access and use a smartbaord. I imagine it will be quite daunting for digital immigrant such as myself. However one definite advantage is that my hands will not dry out from using the chalk!

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  4. Helena, I'm so sorry...but I couldn't find where I can edit your comment :( I can only choose to either publish it or mark it as a spam...obviously I would like to publish it! Don't worry about the little mistakes - blogs can be quite informal :)

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  5. From what we've been learning so far it seems like anything that motivates children to write is considered good, regardless of the form it comes in. So in that sense maybe texting is just one of those fun things that gets kids interested in and using language (even if to us it feels strange)? Once they're hooked on using letters you can do anything! :)

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  6. @Lexie: yep, I agree. It is important to let student understand and remember the importance of proper language learning and we, as teachers, need to know ourselves and to teach our students - although who knows what the future holds!
    @Mark: I agree that technology has brought us with many conveniences. However, as you mentioned hypercoordination, it can cause problems sometimes. For instance, it can be difficult to organise properly beforehand as everyone will just say "yeah, sure, whatever you think" or "whatever suits you" and later something important pops up and the schedule's all mixed up because no one ever record anything in their diaries anymore :) So, everything has its double sides!

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  7. @Tilly: I think TxtSpk can be used for great activities in the classroom - opening for engagement or let the student work out from txtspk and translate into formal language :) testing their English spelling and grammar skills!

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