Twitter having a GR8 effect on students' English, says teacher

Thursday 03 April 2014

A Jersey teacher and tech expert says the new generation of “smartphoners” are changing the way English is written at school, for the better.

Beaulieu’s Assistant Headteacher Rory Steel says he’s seen students’ vocabulary improving thanks to instant messaging. He said: “Because of the limit of 140 characters on Twitter and instant updates on Facebook, I find students’ vocabulary is improving, they want to say more in fewer words.”

And he says he’s no longer seeing the “Brick Phone” generation’s habit of abbreviating spelling - for things like "GR8" and "SUM1" - in his classroom.

He said: “We used to use the old Nokia-type phones with more than one letter on a key (e.g. 2 was abc) and text speak saved you thumb ache. With most smartphones now with full qwerty keyboards and with predictive text, it is actually more hassle now. The 'Brick phone' generation are getting older and the Smartphoners don’t understand why GR8 exists.”

But Mr Steel said social media is having a worse effect on grammar because commas and syntax take up valuable characters.

In the UK, the Head of Headington School for girls in Oxford is calling for a drive to stop the damaging effect of instant messaging on written work. Speaking to the Times a fortnight ago, Caroline Jordan said that fewer people have a good command of the English language and that our English skills often make the difference between landing a job and having a misspelt application filed in the bin.