Illiteracy Rates in America May Rise As Education Boards Remove Writing From Exams and Students Begin Using Slang in the Classroom

Courtesy of NBC News

Only 400 students are enrolled as English majors at the University of Maryland, proving that the interest in writing is dwindling down more and more each year. As technology increases, texting lingo becomes more popular, and different colloquialisms mix throughout the nation, America is slowing losing its Standard English Language. Standard English refers to whatever form of the English Language is accepted as a national norm in any English-speaking country.

While some argue language is a form of self-expression, other educators argue that there is a time and a place for self-expression, but the classroom is not that place.

The inability to settle on what language is allowed in the classroom has left many students questioning their ability to write, and many education systems removing writing from their curriculums as a whole. However, this decision has resulted in students assuming they can speak and write however they please, even in the workplace, by using curse words and acronyms, and riddling their papers with careless typos.


The College Board Eliminates the Writing Section of the SATs as a Way to Say Language is No Longer Important 

In March 2014, the College Board made the executive decision to make the essay portion of the SATs optional starting in 2016. Grammatical questions will be incorporated into the reading section of the exam, eliminating the Writing Section as a whole. There will be 1,600 points total instead of the current 2,400.

Officials stated that these changes were made to better align the exam with what students actually learn in their high school classrooms, and by eliminating the writing portion, students can focus on the skills they will truly need for college.

However, students appear to already be lacking strong writing skills more than anything, based on the National Average SAT Scores of 2013. Without the pressure to ace the Writing Section of the SAT Exam, students will slowly put in less and less effort to language acquisition.                      

Lisa Sopher, an Advanced Placement English and Creative Writing teacher at Hereford High School argues that by removing the Writing Section from the SATs, the colleges to which future student will apply will quickly realize students' inability to think creatively and critically because of their lack of writing practice.

Sopher is not the only one worried about the loss of proficient writing. College admission counselors are now receiving college applications with essays that contain slang words. Many counselors, advisers and professors at the university level are getting fed up with the casual language, and view it as "a dumbing down of culture." In fact, college admissions counselors have just been throwing away essays that do not represent appropriate, academic writing.

Educators and Students In Favor of Eliminating Standard English Argue Slang is the Cool New Effective Rhetorical Language, Thanks to Social Media

Surprisingly, not all educators believe there needs to be a Standard English in the classroom. Assistant Director of the Writing Center at the University of Maryland, Doug Kern, argues that there is not a Standard English to begin with. According to Dr. Kern, language is constantly changing, and with the increase in rapid language being used everyday, such as abbreviations used in texting, students are learning a new language all together.

Dr. Kern views slang and colloquialism as languages that follows their own set of grammatical principles. However, this opinion may have grown out of generational differences.

Younger students and teachers are more engrossed in social media than professors who grew up without. Technology-savvy Americans are arguing that social media has a large impact on the way we write--a good impact. In fact, many educators are arguing the 140 character limit on Twitter has taught students how to be short and concise and to cut out what many teachers call, "the fluff."

By using concise and to-the-point language, many students are figuring out ways to say what they need to say as fast as possible, through the use of abbreviations such as the words displayed below in the short Texting Lingo 101 hand guide.

However, the argument still stands: is this an appropriate way to speak to educators, employers, and colleagues in a professional setting? Will the students of today land jobs if they no longer understand the difference between an independent and dependent clause?

The problem is that technology is never going to evaporate, and students will continue using shorthand language in order to share the most words as fast as possible. In 2011, when the simple, iPhone 4 was finally a huge hit, 84% of high school students were already engaged in electronic communication, such as texting, tweeting, posting Facebook statues and sending emails.

As of today, those numbers have only increased. When US News interviewed students from Maine South High School in IL, students admitted to using language shortcuts in their papers, and said that it was simply the older teachers who were upset about it.

Terry Wood, a teacher with over 10 years of experience at the school, reported that the students do not even capitalize words or use punctuation when they email teachers anymore.

While students brush it off, assuming this rejection of cool, shorthand language is simply due to an age gap, employers argue otherwise.

Employers Warn That If American Students Continue to Use Poor Grammar, Students From Others Countries Will Snatch Up All the Jobs

CEO of iFixit, Kyle Wiens, runs one of the largest online repair companies. Wiens recently wrote an article for The Harvard Business Review titled I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. As a person who fixes social media, he takes the stand with Lisa Sopher stating that "people judge if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're." Companies seek future employees who will represent their company with strong credentials... not typos and numerous grammatical errors in the business letters.

Sopher agrees that if people do not know the difference between their, there, and they're, then "LOL" certainly won't fly in the workplace.

Sopher believes there must be one standard way so that everyone is on the same page of what is required and what is accepted. The problem, however, is that if students are making such horrific errors in their writing and not getting hired because of it, America may be facing a larger problem.

As American students awkwardly dabble between academic language and social language, other nations who have stronger values on language may be pulling ahead. In fact, many European students come to American to perfect English as their second language, and still get better grades than American students who speak English as their first and only language.

In fact, more than 50 percent of the European Union is bilingual. The United States is below 20 percent. Because majority of Americans already speak English, citizens do not need feel the need to learn a second language.

However, studies show that learning a second language can help you understand your own. Because of America's monolingualism, the United States is now lagging behind 16 other countries in terms of student literacy.

Over 70 percent of fourth grades in 11 major U.S. cities are reading below the grade level. Meanwhile, Asian students are thriving above and beyond simply because they have been raised by hard work, and not by iPhones.




Doug Kern Argues Against Employers, Saying English is Still the Language of Power Since Immigrants Come to America for English-Speaking Jobs

Despite the criticism that many companies offer in regards to students' inability to write, students whose first language is English certainly do have an upper hand. Doug Kern argues that if hundreds of Asian students are coming to America to learn English and get jobs, then there is clearly still something valuable about the English language.

From 2008 until 2012, 25 percent of the international student population in the United States consists of students from China. If parents like the infamous Tiger Mom are allowing their children to travel to the United States to be taught by people who use words like "gonna," "ain't" and "probz," then there must be some type of gain in understanding the language of media and technology.

For Now, Americans Believe the Best Thing to Do is to Laugh It Off and Pretend Like Poor Language is No Big Deal

Americans seem to be well aware of the changes occurring language. Names have been designated to those who are hyper-sensitive to grammatical errors. To be a "Grammar Nazi" is an insult. It makes you appear as an uptight nerd. Therefore, American students have turned illiteracy into a joke. On Twitter, users use the hashtag #illiterate when they misspell a word, encounter a typo, or misread a statement. Instead of becoming embarrassed, they laugh at their stupidity to shake it off. 

#illiterate Tweets

But once these students face the job market, this illiteracy may not be so funny after all. Until the older generations who do not engage in social media language die off, high expectations will still be held for all English-speaking Americans in the workplace and in the classroom.

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