Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Technology spells corruption of written English

CHENNAI: “Urs sincrly, ABC” — This is how a college student recently signed off in a formal letter in her English examination. Teachers in schools and colleges are increasingly coming across the trend of common usages in SMS and e-mail creeping into students’ answer-sheets. More and more youngsters are using informal usages and short forms while writing, point out English teachers.

Helen Thimmayya, faculty member of the English Department at Women’s Christian College says the written English of students has been changing over the last few years. “Students tend to use ‘2’ for ‘to’, ‘txt’ for ‘text’ and ‘4’ instead of for,” she says.

Observing that this is more prevalent among students who are more competent in English, she says that some even justifiy such usages, saying, ‘language, after all, changes’. However, teachers such as Ms. Thimmayya are not ready to buy that argument.

“Language changes by adopting new words…It grows. But the breaking-up or shortening words will only lead to its degeneration,” she adds.

Professors of English are strongly discouraging such usages.

“Computer literates consciously or unconsciously resort to such language. But we tell students that it is not acceptable in formal English,” V. Murugan, head of English Department, Presidency College, says.

The exposure to technology, increase in usage of cellular phones, e-mail and other online networking services are some of the reasons teachers cite as cause for this trend.

O. Sathyabama, English lecturer, M.O.P Vaishnav College for Women, says most of the mistakes made by students in examinations are such usages. “We circle so many words for spelling errors because of this. Almost all students seem to have this problem,” she says.

While spoken English may evolve or change to accommodate slang, written English has never suffered so much, note teachers.

“We give students exercises to strengthen their LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing) skills. While spoken English is given a lot of emphasis, it is important for students to acquire good writing skills, too,” she adds.

School teachers note that while the quality of formal spoken and written English among school students has come down, this trend is not as prevalent at school level as at collegiate level.

Kanti Ramakrishnan, Vice-Principal, Chinmaya Vidyala,Taylor’s Road says “Their spoken English could be very colloquial, but written English is largely formal. But yes, it has degenerated.”

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