Does Textspeak make you stupid!?

'Textspeak' or 'Netspeak' are not new terms for me and people have been arguing about whether Textspeak will affect the language standard of students, especially for younger students where they haven’t been mastered the rules of language very well. Teachers would be very worried about the English proficiency of the students, as they have to handle public examinations.

I remember when I first learnt to use ICQ in Form 2. My proficiency of English was not good enough to chat with my friends in complete English sentence, but on the other hand, I didn’t know how to type Chinese characters either (yet), so I tried to use Cantonese written as English, like ‘ng’ (唔), final particles, like ‘la’ (啦), acronyms, like BTW, LOL.

I have a cousin living in Canada and one day he MSN-ed me and chat with me. Later on, I found out that I have to force myself to use English in MSN and SMS to communicate since I have to talk to him. At the beginning, it was quite difficult because I have to use English to express different meanings as the sentence structure of Chinese and English are quite contrastive. But it became easier when I used it everyday and I can even type English faster.

                           

What I want to bring out is that using Textspeak didn’t worsen my English, but the opposite. I found out that I am more capable in constructing a complete sentence, just like when I MSN or SMS my friends, I will just type out what I want to say in the message. By ‘practicing’ everyday, I can type English faster with my keyboard with construct a sentence more smoothly. I totally agree with what David Crystal said about txt. I think people who use Textspeak doesn’t necessary make you stupid, but to make you become more capable to distinguish the difference between Standard English and Textspeak and to use it wisely. 

Information is Everywhere!!

Whether we manipulate information or information manipulates us?


Today, information is everywhere that makes our lives so convenient that we really can’t live without. The Google search engine is a really great helper when we work, we can find everything we want by typing in keywords. With just one click, you can find websites, pictures and video clips about the keyword you typed, e.g. when you typed ‘Information overload’ on Google, it showed about 4,590,000 results in 0.12 seconds (as shown under the search bar). Less than 1 second, you can have all the information you want through Google.
With Google Map, we can find places that we haven’t been before accurately. You can see the map with street view, so you would know how the street looks like even when you haven’t been there before. The first picture has shown where I am living and the second one has shown the back door of where I lived during the study tour!

A is where I am living! 

The backdoor of Wesley College, City Road, Sydney

With Google Docs, we can save and edit our documents in different formats just as we like, like document, presentation, spreadsheet, etc. You can even create folders to manage your documents.
Though the Internet is really convenient and it can make our lives better, we may suffer from Information Fatigue Syndrome from the British Psychologist David Lewis (1990), e.g. having 4,590,000 results from typing ‘Information overload’ or having three hundred more pieces of new feeds on Facebook everyday, or receiving loads of unnecessary emails everyday, etc.

My Digital Life

Digital technologies cannot really separate with my everyday life.

I use my MacBook everyday to do the following things: 

- check Email (Gmail) My Email Address!
- use Facebook to connect with my friends My Facebook

- use MSN and Skype to communicate with my friends in Hong Kong and overseas
- watch videos clips or music videos in YouTube, e.g. Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are
- read my classmates’ blogs, as well as to write blogs like what I am doing now

I use my moblie phone everyday to text with my friends and parents and my iPod Touch for quick information, e.g. bus routes, restaurant guide, dictionary, etc. 

In my leisure time, I take pictures with my digital camera and upload them on Facebook.

In this course, I think I can learn the way we use English in digital media, how people use those digital technologies to communicate with each other, whether the relationship between people become closer or distant and the things we can do with digital media, e.g. we can see the pictures immediately with digital cameras, and we can use Photoshop to edit the photos.