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Students Use of Slang in the Classrooms Becoming the Norm

Students Use of Slang in the Classrooms Becoming the Norm
6/13/2011
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Suada Kolovic

Text messaging, Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized the way we communicate with one another on a daily basis. From slang terms to text-speak, the casualness has become somewhat routine but what happens when students blur those barriers of online communication and slang shortcuts creep into the classroom? High school teachers are dealing with a lot more IDKs, IMOs and IDCs on assignments nationwide.

Terry Wood, a foreign language teacher at St. Mary's Ryken High School in Leonardtown, Md., has seen a "dramatic decline" in the writing abilities of her students. "They do not capitalize words or use punctuation anymore," Wood, a teacher with 10 years of in-class experience, says. "Even in e-mails to teachers or [on] writing assignments, any word longer than one syllable is now abbreviated to one."

While some advocates have argued that the use of slang is simply an evolution of language, Chad Dion Lassiter, professor of race relations at the University of Pennsylvania disagrees: He considers it "a dumbing down of culture." "We're looking at some of these writing skills and what I'm noticing is [that] there is miscommunication due to the fact that their communication is so limited," he says. "The problem is the adults. We have to train adults to work with young people and hold them accountable."

What do you think? Does slang belong on assignments? If not, how should teachers combat this growing trend of text lingo in the classroom?

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