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MODULE 1

TYPES OF SYLLABLES

UNIT 1

WRITING AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES

I. Lead-in

1. Tick any of the statements below which are true for you. Then compare your answers with your partner’s. How similar are they? What would you say about your partner’s attitude to writing?

What do you think about your writing?

1.I think writing in English is more difficult than speaking. _____

2.I think I don’t really have many problems in writing in English. _____

3.I don’t write very much in my first language. _____

4.Writing is important to me because

I may have to write in English in a job._____

I have to pass examinations in English. _____

I want to write to my English friends. _____

………………………………………..

………………………………………..

5.I expect to do a lot of writing in class. _____

6.I expect to do a lot of writing by myself at home. _____

7.I usually check through my writing before I hand it in. _____

8.I expect the teacher to mark all of the mistakes in my work. _____

9.I want my teacher to write comments about what is good or not good in my writing. _____

10.I make a careful note of the teacher’s corrections when I get work back. _____

11.I usually read the comments and look at the grade but I don’t study the corrections in detail. _____

12.I would like to see and peer-check other students writing sometimes. _____

2.Get into small groups and discuss the following questions. Choose a student in your group to feed back to the rest of the class about your ideas.

1.How much writing do you do in your language/in English?

2.When do you usually have to write in English?

3.What does the writing process usually involve? What do you usually do when you write?

4.What makes the learning of writing an important experience? Think in terms of conveying ideas, arousing feelings, persuading and convincing other people, articulating and discovering ideas, transcending time and space?

5.Which of the following ideas by some EFL students on writing in English are you familiar with?

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“Oh, I’ve no ideas …”

“It is always not enjoyable to get started …”

“If there is any satisfaction, it comes only at the end …”

“I don’t think writing is a very satisfactory experience, because it takes a lot of time and also requires a lot of effort …”

“The trouble is that people usually judge your knowledge by what you can write …”

6.What other problems do you usually face in the process of writing? Think of spelling, grammar, lack of vocabulary, cohesion etc.?

(From: White R., Arndt V. Process Writing. Longman, 1997. P. 11)

3. Pair Work. In pairs share your experience and ideas on the questions below. Feed back to the rest of the class about what you have in common with your partner. What conclusion can you come about the role of modern technologies in your life and their influence on your written communication?

Literacy, texting and modern technologies

1.How often do you use your mobile phone/smartphone/IPhone/tablet PC/ computer/iPad?

2.What do you use them for?

3.How often do you send text messages?

4.How long is the average text message that you send?

5.How much do you spend on your mobile phone/smartphone/IPhone/tablet PC/computer/iPad?

6.How often do you change them?

7.What would your life be like without these devices?

II. Practice

1. Work on your own first and see how many text messages from the table below you can “translate” and write what they mean in English. When you finish, in pairs compare and share your answers.

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2. Gapped dictation.

Your teacher will dictate the text below to you (don’t look at it yet!). As you listen write down only the initial and the last letter of each word.

Example: She rarely journeyed farther than the corner grocery. S__e r___y j_____d f_____r t_____n t__e c______r g_____y.

Then get together into small groups and try to reconstruct the whole text. After that, open the book and check your work.

Texting and Literacy

Lately, some people have been concerned that the explosion in text messaging among young people is having a negative effect on their literacy skills.

Texting is fast and concise. This is to save time and space. A reader who is unfamiliar with texting will feel lost when they see abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons. For texters, this language is easy to read and write.

The debate about the harmful effects of texting started many years ago. Teachers began noticing examples of texting language in their students’ exam papers. One case, a 13-year-old Scottish girl who wrote an entire description of her summer holidays in text language, became famous. Her teacher sent a sample of the essay to a national newspaper and readers sent in hundreds of letters giving their opinion.

Do you think people who send a lot of text messages have serious problems with literacy? Have you had any problems?

3. Read the original Scottish girl’s essay extract. Work in pairs and try to “translate” it into English. Write down the correct variant.

Check with the whole class.

My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2 go NY 2C my bro, his GF&thr 3: - @ kds FTF. ILNY, its gr8.

Bt my Ps wr so {:-/ BC o 9/11 tht thay dcdd 2 stay in SCO & spnd 2 wks up N. Up N, WUCIWUG -- 0. I ws vvv brd in MON. 0 bt baas & ˆˆ

III. On Your Own

1.Write short messages in “text language” to each other in pairs. Then exchange messages and “translate” your partner’s messages.

You can use the websites below to make up your messages: http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php http://www.techdictionary.com/chat.html

2.Discussion.

Read the text below. State E. Johnson’s, D. Crystal’s and E. Jansen’s views on the link between the rise of the Internet and students’ writing skills.

Whose stance do you support? Do you regard the Internet as a Motivator or anything else? Share and discuss your ideas in the group.

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Students’ Writing and the Web: Motivator or …?

Some teachers blame the Internet for an increase in spelling and grammar errors. But language experts praise it for making communication more expressive. The Internet is adding to vocabulary but, some argue, at a cost.

Eleanor Johnson (an English professor at Columbia University in New York): “I think that text messaging has made students believe that it’s far more acceptable than it actually is to just make screamingly atrocious spelling and grammatical errors.”

She says her students over the past several years have increasingly used less formal English in their writing. She says words and phrases like “guy” and “you know” now appear in research papers.

And she now has to talk about another problem in class, she says – incorrect word use. For example, a student says “preclude” instead of “precede” when talking about one event coming before another. It sounds like “precede” but it means “prevent”.

Professor Johnson suspects a strong link between the rise of instant and casual communication online and an increase in writing mistakes. But she admits there may not be much scientific evidence, at least not yet.

David Crystal is a British linguist who has written more than one hundred books, including the book “Language and the Internet.” He says the actively changing nature of the Internet makes it difficult to stay current in studying its effects. But he believes its influence on language is small.

David Crystal: “The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of the language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven’t existed in the past.”

Erin Jansen is founder of Netlingo, an online dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms. She says the new technology has not changed existing

language but has greatly added to the vocabulary. “Basically it’s a freedom of expression,” she says…

Erin Jansen: “I always advocate, don’t get angry or upset about that, get creative. If it’s helping the kids write more or communicate more in their first draft, that’s great. That’s what teachers and educators want, is to get kids communicating.”

But Erin Jansen and David Crystal agree with Eleanor Johnson on at least one thing. Teachers need to make sure students understand the uses and rules of language.

English Phenomenon in Russian Interpretation”. . 42–43)

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