Blog 2

I recall a post by a colleague of mine who had a complaint about well-educated/employed adults using da (the), der (there) and dat (that) in their Facebook posts and comments. Although I refrained from responding to the post she received quite a bit of slack for voicing her concern. She was informed that in the world/age of social media this form of communication was acceptable. As the comments trickled in, the "offended" readers basically told her to get off her high horse. Looking back on it now I can understand her concern and I think many of these adults missed her point. She felt that as grown adults who are well-educated and working in higher positions should reflect this in their writing no matter what social media they are writing on or under?

 

However, as a teacher at that time, I recognized her concern. Many of the students in our school were/are struggling to switch from "informal language of digital writing to the formal language of academia" (Turner, 2012, p.46). The people who took offense were not familiar with the ongoing struggles of trying to teach students the difference between the two forms of writing, and that their frequent errors were due to their inability to consciously switch to the appropriate language. However, if she had read this article – as I know her very well, she would have taken this idea and found a way to turn her students’ mastery of digitalk into a skill that could be used to help them with standard academic writing.

Any opinions or thoughts on this matter?