05/08/2003

By LORI MATSUKAWA / KING 5 News

SEATTLE - Instant messenger lingo among teens is here to stay. But there's a growing concern from many teachers at all levels that the casual shorthand is finding its way into class work.

What can educators and parents do to keep kids from blurring the lines between proper English and the array of whittled-down words?

KING Kids communicate with each other via computer - with a whole new lingo.

Ninth-grader Roxanne Nice uses it every day after school.

"I've become so used to it because that's the way I always talk to my friends online," she said.

Other abbreviations:

"How are you?" becomes "how r u?"

"Not much here" becomes "NMH."

There's just one problem.Last week Roxanne turned in an English assignment spelling “you” as “u.”

She's not alone. Just ask high school English teacher Lucy Pearce.

"I've definitely noticed an increase (of poor spelling) in their homework and also in journal assignments," said Pearce.

Page after page of writing assignments turned in to teacher Jennifer Carlyle become littered with checkmarks deducting points because of Internet-speak.

"I think that they become kind of desensitized and they don't notice it every time," said Carlyle.

"I think it's an insult to the English language," said Roxanne’s mother, Annie Nice, who’s worried about what all that Internet typing is doing to her daughter's writing skills.

KING A new language?

Another teacher, Katharine Young, finds it difficult to convey an anti-IM message to her students. “I get them for one hour, and I’m convincing them to do something different from the way they do it the other 23 hours of the day,” she says.

“I try to convince them, it will cripple their opportunities. It will make them look not as professional or as intelligent… People are going to take their stuff and toss it in a whole different pile down the road if it’s not packaged well.”

Many writing assignments turned into English teacher Jennifer Carlyle become inundated with checkmarks deducting points because of Internet lingo. “I think that they become sort of desensitized and they don’t notice it every time,” she says.

One person who doesn’t worry about Internet lingo is Joe Milner, chairman of education at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and co-author of a textbook about teaching English. He says the lingo even shows up at the college level.

"Language is constantly changing,” he said. “It's been changing forever."

Students just need to know when to turn the lingo off, like in school or when addressing adults.

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Teachers offer advice

"It's like, you wouldn't wear blue jeans to a funeral,” said Milner. “You'd dress up nicely. So the language needs to be dressed up nicely."

But coaching students to dress up their language isn't easy, say teachers - not when you're up against the Internet.

"I get them for one hour and I'm convincing them to do something different when they do it a different way for the other 23 hours of the day," said high school English teacher Katharine Young.

Milner says it's not about abolishing the abbreviations, or turning off the computer, but that parents should simply teach kids that school is not for slang.

"Without putting them down, or making them feel guilty, they should just show them that's not right," he said.

Still, with the code language flourishing, some parents are left wondering how English will look once the Internet gets finished with it.

"How would Romeo & Juliet have turned out had Shakespeare decided to abbreviate everything?" asked Annie Nice.

Before you get too concerned about Internet lingo corrupting the language, English professors point out similar shortcuts are already accepted. One example is the invention of the telegraph gave us the phrase "SOS".

So, should parents turn off the computer? Milner suggests a simpler approach -- teaching them when lingo’s not appropriate. “Without putting them down, or making them feel guilty, they should just show them, that’s not right,” he says.