Language and Literature Blog #6 (Written Task 1)

Written Task 1

Nader Al Ramahi

223 Huningtale Blvd.

Nashville, Tennessee

June 19, 2014

John Rose 

Dear Editor,

My name is John Rose, and I’m an International Baccalaureate DP English teacher. Throughout this letter, I wish to be able to administer some intimate insight and perspective on my behalf to a recent editorial that arose onto PR daily the other day about the “4 ways texting is killing our communication skills.” I would like to provide you with my contradicting mindset with the utmost respect and intimacy while exhibiting reverence towards you and your coherent point of view.

First of all I fully disagree with your first proclamation “Texting reduces the need for in-depth conversations.” Mainly because I feel that you wrote about the topic from one implausible issue which was “Have you ever texted people as a form of avoidance, A few abbreviated words keep people from meaningful dialogue and face-to-face communication.” Which as a statement is completely illegitimate because people don’t include abbreviations only because they intend to avoid a particular person, but instead they implement abbreviations in their texts when they are in a hurry and want to transfer a message to another person as quickly as possible or they would like to remain equivalent texting at the same pace of speech, meaning that a person abbreviates so they would be able to write just as swiftly as they would if they were to speak, you also didn’t incorporate any other clear possible reasons to why text speak could conceivably be a negative impact to “people’s need for in-depth conversation.”

Your 2^nd statement “texting dumbs down spelling and grammar” in my opinion is a very imprecise and general allegation that unrightfully places the blame on texting without the relevant research conducted and referenced in your article. You also came up with a hasty conclusion by stating that because we use shortcuts in spelling, punctuation, and emoticons these factors “are giving way to generations of lazy and sloppy communicators.” I would like of you to think of this issue in a way in which the students or teenagers aren’t trying to avoid spelling a word incorrectly or in an illiterate manner but instead they know that a certain part of a word contains vowels; therefore they would not spell out the vowels. For example a student might want to write to his/her friend: “I really enjoyed the movie today, and because they know that the word really is spelt really they would cut the vowels out of the word in order to keep up with the same pace of speech as I stated in the previous paragraph. The message I’m trying to convey to you is that if the students did not know how to spell the word in the first place they would not know how to abbreviate it and the reason they would like to abbreviate the word in the first place is due to the fact that these teenagers want to maintain and equilibrium between the pace of writing and the pace of speech.

As for the third statement “Texting distracts us from being fully present.” I fully agree with you because I also believe that texting most frequently causes us to place our focus primarily on our phones which results in teens being absent-minded and not fully aware of what’s encircling them at a particular moment; however I don’t see how that would affect our language in any negative way and how that “would kill our communication skills” I see this point as an entirely irrelevant section of the article unless you have an ambiguous interpretation that you didn’t elaborate on well enough.

Finally the 4^th statement “Texting invites ambiguity” because Nokia smartphones only allowed for 160 characters to be included in a single text message and generally that would not assist in getting your message along well enough and would cause disruption in the ways people might think, but nowadays smartphones allow for unlimited character counts such as IPhones and Samsung Galaxy smartphones which help in promoting more comprehensible messages to abolish ambiguity between individuals who use text messaging to communicate.

In conclusion, I believe that all of your statements lack meticulous reasoning and insufficient research backing up your proclamations and allegations towards the negative impacts of texting and how “texting is killing our communication skills.” I hope that throughout this letter I would have modified and adjusted your mindset towards texting as well as its alleged and putative accusations which I believe are highly inaccurate due to the biased majority of adults who dislike text speak because they believe that it affects people’s language in a negative way since that is the most logical take towards this contentious and antagonistic topic.