Thursday, June 19, 2008

Chat is bad

Chat is a game, a kind of addiction. If people pay attention to the chat, it makes them waste too much time especially teenagers. In that time, their languages are going to go in the wrong ways, for example cutting down words or changing meanings of words. These affect the teenager’s low ability in their language. “Professor Ben Yagoda has been teaching English for 16 years. Students, he says, are getting brighter. But their abilities to write clearly have deteriorated appreciably in the past four or five years” (Weeks, 2008, para. 35). The trouble from chat has increased in contemporary society. People should be concerned about the problem of chat.

In this paper, I argue that the chat causes the students to have wrong habits of in writing. Also, students waste time because of doing chat. Therefore, too much chatting decreases the quality of our culture.

The choice of words during the chat is what which makes it a wrong habit. The teenagers usually use the reduced form and symbols. For example, “A.S.A.P” can explain “as soon as possible” or some feeling can be explained ^^, -.-. If students use the chat word with public language, the meaning makes others confused, especially older people. “A recent survey by the College Board and Pew Internet and American Life Project found that most students say it’s important to know how to write well, but a majority also said that internet-style language –including abbreviations and emoticons – is making its way into their class work” (Weeks, 2008, para. 37). Also, their conversation is so fast during the chat it makes students lack thinking. For example, students don’t use consideration for their schoolwork of writing. “As more and more teenagers socialize online, middle school and high school teachers like Ms. Harding are increasingly seeing a breezy form of Internet English jump from e-mail into schoolwork” (Lee, 2002, paras.12-14). Therefore, chat habit causes decreasing ability of their language, which didn’t help their studying way.

In addition, most students waste time in order to chat. Students need time for studying; they should learn for their successful goals. For example, most middle schools and high schools require homework and review for lessons. If students pay attention to the chat, probably they will fail in their lessons. Also, long time chat can be related to a bad situation. For example, some sexual criminals try to contact teenagers with chat. This is a very serious problem of society. Therefore, because students don’t use their spare time wisely, teenagers can be exposed to the sexual crime.

In conclusion, chat is spread widely by teenagers. It makes a wrong style of writing and just light composition, so people feel it is difficult to understand the meaning with teenagers. Teenagers “whose social life can rely as much these days on text communication as the spoken word, say that they use instant-messaging shorthand without thinking about it” (Lee, 2002, para12-14). Therefore, the students should use the chat less and try the correct way of language skill in their schoolwork.-

Reference:

Lee, J. (2002, September). Nu shortcuts in school R 2 much 4 teachers. NY Times. Retrieved June 16, 2008, from http://tinyurl.com/5p7vtb.

Weeks, L. (2008, June 15). The fate of the sentence: is the writing on the wall? Washington Post. Retrieved June 16, 2008, from tinyurl.com/6bp4kz.

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