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Txt spk aprvd 4 exams in New Zealand

Link: Txt speak approved for exams – New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) is still strongly discouraging students from using anything other than full English, but says credit will be given if the answer “clearly shows the required understanding”, even if it contains text speak.

I think I’m a hardliner when it comes to English. You have either spelt CONSTANTINOPLE correctly or you have spelt it incorrectly. I don’t think there should be a gray area around this. Otherwise what’s the point in having a written English exam?

I don’t agree with ‘oh we know what little Johnny means when he writes “I woz goin on a trip n I forrrrt I saw a burd.”‘ So you don’t damage little Johnny’s self esteem? Nonsense. Little Johnny’s going to get a wake-up call when he enters industry.

It’s that, or give every student Microsoft Word’s spell-check facility.

3 COMMENTS

  1. This assumes that ‘txt spk’ is the same for everyone, too. It’s very hard to know what someone has intended to write unless they have spelt it in the accepted way and used the accepted grammar and punctuation.

    Otherwise, people will be ROFLing all over the place and examiners will be giving them points rather than admit they’re not down with the kids!

  2. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

    Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

    by George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language”, 1946 (google it)

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