Over at the Mail it's that time of year again when we discover that education is being fundamentally eroded, standards dumbed down, English destroyed and that the end of society as we know it is nigh.
Yep, they're on the warpath again about English exams. It's nothing new for them, it's the dreary old topic of texting. Apparently there is a "new English exam*" that includes "sections on texting". It isn't an exam about texting, it isn't an English exam that consists solely of texting, it's an exam that includes a section on texting.
According to the Mail on Sunday they have to "write an essay on the etiquette and grammar of texting, using their own messages as examples". Why is this any different to writing an essay on any other topic? There is no suggestion that they should write it using txt abbreviations (though I'll bet some of the students try) and it seems to me to be a perfectly proper essay question.
I do have a quibble about it in that they will, apparently (you can't trust everything that you read in the papers), be required to use their own texts as examples. Although most teenagers use texting abbreviations not all of them do. Some of them text in whole sentences. With punctuation. They will be at a disadvantage. That's my only slight doubt about it. Otherwise I will say again what I have said before. A text is a text is a text. The skill of reading means the skill of applying appropriate strategies to a text. It would, as I have pointed out in response to one of their previous hell-in-a-handbasket scares, be as ludicrous to read a train timetable from start to finish as it would to read a novel by taking random sentences from it. And it would be just as ludicrous to apply the same standards of creative writing to a text message saying "CU L8R" as to a sonnet or a letter to the bank manager or a diary entry.
The world isn't going to be destroyed because someone writes an essay about the etiquette of texting.
(*It's also not a new exam. It's a GCSE from the AQA - one of the largest exam boards in the country. It just happens to have included an extra bit in the syllabus.)
Yep, they're on the warpath again about English exams. It's nothing new for them, it's the dreary old topic of texting. Apparently there is a "new English exam*" that includes "sections on texting". It isn't an exam about texting, it isn't an English exam that consists solely of texting, it's an exam that includes a section on texting.
According to the Mail on Sunday they have to "write an essay on the etiquette and grammar of texting, using their own messages as examples". Why is this any different to writing an essay on any other topic? There is no suggestion that they should write it using txt abbreviations (though I'll bet some of the students try) and it seems to me to be a perfectly proper essay question.
I do have a quibble about it in that they will, apparently (you can't trust everything that you read in the papers), be required to use their own texts as examples. Although most teenagers use texting abbreviations not all of them do. Some of them text in whole sentences. With punctuation. They will be at a disadvantage. That's my only slight doubt about it. Otherwise I will say again what I have said before. A text is a text is a text. The skill of reading means the skill of applying appropriate strategies to a text. It would, as I have pointed out in response to one of their previous hell-in-a-handbasket scares, be as ludicrous to read a train timetable from start to finish as it would to read a novel by taking random sentences from it. And it would be just as ludicrous to apply the same standards of creative writing to a text message saying "CU L8R" as to a sonnet or a letter to the bank manager or a diary entry.
The world isn't going to be destroyed because someone writes an essay about the etiquette of texting.
(*It's also not a new exam. It's a GCSE from the AQA - one of the largest exam boards in the country. It just happens to have included an extra bit in the syllabus.)
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