I've always been a good speller for as long as I can remember, when it comes to texting I usually don't take shortcuts when it comes to that. I see where Professor Wells is going with his theory of bending the rules slightly. For instance, he says with the words, their, there, and they're, there should only be one "there" because the meaning will always stay the same if we just use one of the words. Allowing people to spell everything their own way may not always make them better learners or spellers. I don't think anyone should really try to take anything away from the English language such as spelling. Maybe there should be an easier way of teaching students how to spell properly, that wont make it so that we need to change the way we spell. Coming up with new techniques of teaching students how to spell better and testing it out is not always a bad thing, but in the long run spelling everything the correct way can be beneficial as well.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Relaxation of English Spelling Rules
In this article Professor John Wells of University College of London, gives several examples of how we should make English easier to understand and write. Along with that there is a conversation that is in this article that you can listen to that is of Professor Wells speaking of how we should make spelling easier on children so that they understand everything better. Making spelling ore difficult for children makes it that much harder for them to learn how to read and spell at the same time. Professor Wells speaks of text messaging now a days and how when texting, people shorten the spelling of words up to save time, but they still know what the word means either way.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I liked reading this article. However, I'm a little appalled about people wanting to make changes to "make spelling easier." Texting [short hand] is informal, and should never replace the words we use today. However I am also aware that words continuously evolve, and change - new ones are added and others are taken away, but normally for good reason. I don't find the reason in this article being valid enough to want to change the spelling of certain words.
You are right about coming up with new teaching techniques if need be. It's the way it should be done. :)
I agree with the author about the streamlining of the language. As much as I don't like it, the way the English language is heading is towards shorter words and easier spellings. Texting is a strange phenomenon that I've never really gotten into, but I'm a member of a very small minority. Everybody texts. It's as easy as that. This isn't something that is going to go away either. Whether it be online through forums, instant messagers or through phones, people are going to continue shortening words to make them easier to type.
Now again, I agree with the author that this seems to be the natural progression of the language. I DON'T like it. I remember being in a fiction writing class and somebody handing in a story to workshop that had used the letter "u" instead of the word "you" in it constantly. I think disgust is the best word to describe my reaction. I sincerely hope that the word "you" won't be replaced with "u" any time soon, but I also wouldn't mourn the loss of "there" "their" and "they're."
Post a Comment