TEXT-MESSAGING, the shorthand language favoured by teenagers in the digital age, has started to elbow aside conventional grammar among high school English learners.
Today's teenagers are 10 times more likely to use non-standard English in written exams than before. They use colloquial words, informal phrases and text messages such as "m8" for "mate", "2" instead of "too" and "u" for "you".
This language has made it into classrooms. Schoolchildren are now handing in essays written in text messages.
Educators say abbreviated words are fine for text messages on the mobile phone, but in school essays, it only shows the laziness of today's youth. They argue that the use of these abbreviations allows the user to avoid having to spell correctly and masks their ignorance of the language and its usage.
Despite this, a two-year study by Cambridge University has found that today's teenagers are using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling. The quality of writing has also improved, said Alf Massey, head of evaluation at Cambridge Assessment, the department of Cambridge University that carried out the study.
But phrases that may not have been acceptable to examiners have crept into regular use.
Barry Spurr, a senior lecturer in English at the University of Sydney, said it was no surprise to learn that students were adapting their lingo to their studies as a move away from the formal use of English.
"It's a symptom of the general backdown in the appreciation of the formal and grammatical use of English," he said.
"The problem is they haven't been corrected, as teachers haven't been trained to teach formal grammar."
Spurr said the real test was whether teenagers stuck to using colloquialisms and text messages when they were writing something they knew required a more formal use of English.
"Writing a serious love letter, for example. How can you use that sort of language when you are being serious about your emotions?" he said.
He also questioned whether the shorthand really did lead to greater clarity of language or whether it was simply faster.
