Monday, January 25, 2010
Gr8 Db8
Although educators have become enlightened about the link between spelling and intelligence or academic ability - there is none - any teacher of writing will admit to being both amazed and amused from time to time at students' creative misspellings. While spell check certainly helps writers produced more polished essays, my experience is that it doesn't seem to actually help children learn to spell. And with the advent of instant and text messaging, the job for all teachers of writing has gotten more difficult. As Ammon Shea points out in The Keypad Solution, from Friday's New York Times, many have tried to "fix" spelling in the English language, without much success. Now text messaging may be the start of a populist spelling revolution - every English teacher I know cringes at the thought. Will it happen? Is it a good thing? You be the judge.
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If text-message-style spelling helps students write first drafts more quickly, then more power to it--after all, it's just a form of abbreviation. (This is something I advocate for note-taking in my "How to Study" website.) What students do have to remember, however, is to "translate" their abbreviations into standard spelling for their final draft:-)
On a related note, there's an interesting article in the current issue of American Educator arguing that good handwriting can make for better writers, in the sense of improving the "quantity and quality" of writing:
Graham, Steve (2009-2010), "Want to Improve Children's Writing? Don't Neglect Their Handwriting", American Educator 33(4) (Winter): 20–27, 40.
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