Texting, Classrooms, and Code-Switching

It’s hard to ignore the social phenomenon and pitfalls born from cellular phones. More and more we see people with their heads held low, fixated on their mobile phone: checking the weather, surfing the internet, or answering a text message. Now, perhaps we’re not so fond of the social ramifications of constant connection to the world wide web. After all, 23% of driving accidents in 2011 involved the use of a cell phone.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Naturally cellular phones (and most technology) get a bad reputation and most educators are reluctant to have that type of technology in the classroom. Texting is a misspelled, over-abbreviated, meaningless language that is destroying students’ abilities to read and write in their respective languages, right? WRONG. 

According to David Crystal, a professor linguistics at the University of Wales, texting gives students more opportunities to use language, but not only that, students are aware of when it is appropriate to use that type of language. Check out this video about his theory on cell phone use and the English language. 

There are a few things that we can learn from this as teachers:

1) Students need more opportunities to use “academic” writing

2) Student’s need to be taught how to code-switch

If our students are taught to recognize when and where to use a certain type of language, that is, how to code-switch, problems with literacy, spelling, and even comprehension should dissipate.

Secondly, as Crystal mentions, the more practice with one type of language the better one will utilize and interact in that language. If teachers are concerned about writing having authentic writing experiences is the best way to teach “good” writing. What technologies can we use to facilitate "good" writing?