Students' Writing and the Web: Motivator or OMG?

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Web browsers first appeared on computers in the early nineteen nineties. Since then, the Internet has greatly changed the way people communicate. But some teachers think the changes are not all for the better.

Eleanor Johnson is an English professor at Columbia University in New York.

ELEANOR JOHNSON: "I think that text messaging has made students believe that it's far more acceptable than it actually is to just make screamingly atrocious spelling and grammatical errors."

She says her students over the past several years have increasingly used less formal English in their writing. She says words and phrases like "guy" and "you know" now appear in research papers.

And she now has to talk about another problem in class, she says -- incorrect word use. For example, a student says "preclude" instead of "precede" when talking about one event coming before another. It sounds like precede but it means prevent.

Professor Johnson suspects a strong link between the rise of instant and casual communication online and an increase in writing mistakes. But she admits there may not be much scientific evidence, at least not yet.

David Crystal is a British linguist who has written more than one hundred books, including the book "Language and the Internet." He says the actively changing nature of the Internet makes it difficult to stay current in studying its effects. But he believes its influence on language is small.

DAVID CRYSTAL: "The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past."

Erin Jansen is founder of Netlingo, an online dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms. She says the new technology has not changed existing language but has greatly added to the vocabulary. "Basically it's a freedom of expression," she says.

And what about teachers who find these new kinds of mistakes in spelling and grammar in their students' work. What is her message to them?

ERIN JANSEN: "I always advocate, don't get angry or upset about that, get creative. If it's helping the kids write more or communicate more in their first draft, that's great. That's what teachers and educators want, is to get kids communicating."

But Erin Jansen and David Crystal agree with Eleanor Johnson on at least one thing. Teachers need to make sure students understand the uses and rules of language.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Lawan Davis, with reporting by Rachel Abrams. We want to know what you have to say about the effects of the Internet on language and writing. Post your comments at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty.

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