Smartphones and templates offer a newer mode of communication and slowly, it seems, a new language is taking shape. Short, incomplete sentences with alternatively spelled words are dominating the domain. Incomplete thoughts… and abbreviations http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php are rapidly becoming familiar.
I’ve (Yiola) bin thinking about literacies and what txt and tweets and FB mean for literacy development. IDK what to make of this. It’s interesting cuz language changes. wordz change. punctuation ceases to exist. LOL
youth 2day use symbols, short forms, a variety of new symbols to communicate.
I’m still wondering how #hashtag came to be the symbol that it is. #justdontunderstand
The exclamation point has indicated strong emotion. now we have 🙂 😉 and 😦
Is one more correct than the other?
Plz share some insights… i’d luv 2 hear ur thoughts on the implications for teachers, teacher educators, parents. I mean, how r we to communicate and facilitate language development if we r not in tune with social media discourses of youth today? Do we ignore it? Incorporate it? Explicitly teach the differences between formal / traditional language and social text?
ttys, yiola
Literacy Teaching and Teacher Education 
Good questions. I think it’s worth acknowledging social text in the classroom and explicitly teaching the differences between it and formal language. Social text is omnipresent so we can’t ignore it but formal language is still important for all children to have a good grasp of because it’s a more reliable constant of communication.
Thanks for the comment Garrry! I agree. Formal text is also still the language of power (Delpit) and so I agree about the explicit teaching of both the strengths and differences and the “when” and “whys” of communication. Like you, I think it’s worth acknowledging and also being open to possibilities for change.