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Kinds of chat
I have learned that it's important to distinguish kinds of
chat, and to introduce students and friends to the kind(s) of chat you
intend to have with them. My students, all adults, have not all chatted,
but all have encountered stereotypes about chat and what it's used for.
Introducing kinds of chat is one way of saying that they're not all the same;
the kind you are about to see may be different from what you're used to.
There are other reasons for knowing differences. First, students chat a
lot, with each other, in many different ways, and in different
languages. It's useful to know what they do and ask them how
they feel about its effect on how they are learning formal English. They
may not have even thought about it, but more likely they suspect it has
been hurting them, and they are embarrassed about that, unlikely to tell
you about it unless you open up the conversation with them.
I am not dogmatic about the idea that their consistent, repeated chatting
may have hurt them or may be hurting them; I'm not even convinced that
it does, in the big picture. Clearly, to me, it both hurts them and helps them simultaneously. The main
way that it hurts them is that it takes up a lot of their time, time
they could be using to study or to practice more formal English. But they may
not be aware that they could be chatting in more formal English; they
could be helping themselves in various ways, and again, they won't know
about this unless you open up the topic. The question of whether an
English language learner should just go out and find chats throughout
the world of available chats is not a simple one, since some
semi-formal chats will be very good for them, while a whole universe of
bad writing habits and seedy predators awaits them in others. For us to
dismiss the whole picture as frivolous is not the answer; they need chat
skills, they need to be able to distinguish between kinds of chat
environments, and they need to behave and respond appropriately in the
environments that they are in.
Just before writing this (Jan. 2009) I made a reservation for my hotel
in Denver for the conference at which this demonstration is being presented.
Immediately after I had reserved my room, a chat window appeared on the screen,
clearly endorsed by the hotel and implying that I was obliged to respond. Upon
scanning, I noticed that it was one of those deals where I am offered $20 or
$30 off on my room in return for joining something that would cost me three or
four times more, over the long haul, if I don't get mad and cancel first. I
credit my scanning skills, my familiarity with chat, and the enduring cynicism
of the American consumer for extracting me from this nightmare. But I'd like
you to put your students in this situation for a moment. Would they be able
to do the same?
In my classes I do written (text), multi-user,
semi-formal English chat. I ask students to be respectful and remember
that it's a class; most have no trouble with this. Beyond that, if they
can use shortened versions of words (pls, thx, lol) and be understood, I
don't object. I am pretty quick with the question marks for times
when I don't understand their emoticons or abbreviations, and
in any case, it's a lesson for them in what works and what doesn't.
I measure communicative competence, which in this case is
not measured in perfect grammar. It's measured in what they can
do and whether they can show minimal politeness in the process.
Nevertheless, it's somewhat like any raucus class of young people
communicating constantly: mistakes happen. Native languages slip out.
Not every message is successful. I also stress that semi-formal chat is
available to them in other places besides my class (including Facebook)
and that it would benefit them, in general, to practice it. I give advice for
students who venture into the world of chat; most of what I tell them is here. It is important to
note that at the first moment you start chatting with students
electronically, there may be a wide variety of experiences with chat in
the room, from the older student who has never seen it or used it, to
the young gamers who have logged thousands of hours of video games with
all of those thousands accompanied by a constant stream of vulgarities
and game-lingo. Does the student with those thousands of hours of
experience have an advantage over the other? Yes, in terms of
familiarity with the technology, and in typing and reaction skills. You
may have some students, absolute newcomers, who
will invariably complain that they just can't do it. Others may come from
the world of text-messaging, where knowledge of codes and symbols is a given.
Voice chat
There are various programs to help set up voice chat in a lab full of
computers, but this presentation doesn't deal with them, or with what
would happen, if one started using voice chat in class settings. In
general, the world is moving into online learning environments where one
can post an essay, see one's teacher and classmates live, regardless
of physical proximity, and have an ongoing chat on the
side; this, however, is often overwhelming for even native speakers. I
recommend putting students in this environment,
since it is apparent that online conferencing will play a crucial role in
modern business and diplomacy in the near future, but for students struggling with the
language in the first place, it's best to start with the component
parts of the process, i.e. chatting (1).
txt msg
It's important to distinguish chat,
which happens with a full keyboard, from text messaging (or SMS), which generally
happens from a phone with more limited keyboard. Text messages are more
extremely abbreviated than chat, so they rely more on partners being
able to understand the more extremely abbreviated forms. I don't have a
lot of experience with text messaging, but know that in some
environments it is used often enough to become essentially its own language, and
gather its own idioms, unknown outside of the texting universe.
Generally, its rigid abbreviation patterns serve as a proving grounds:
if thousands of texters understand pls, thx & lol, every time,
these will move over into chat and slowly into standard writing. Why
not? Everyone understands them! Texting tends to be more common where
people are always moving, always relying on simpler cell-phones, or, for
example, in classes, where the smaller keyboards on phones can be manipulated more
easily, more quickly, and more secretly, than larger ones. Again, I have to admit
to not fully understanding this universe of activity, much of which goes on without
me even knowing, even in my own classroom.
As time goes
by, the distinction between texting and chatting (especially in the minds of
those for whom they were not clearly distinct to begin with) seems to fade, at least in English
in the US; certainly more cell phones have better capability (and students
increasingly carry the higher-capability phones), and regular chat, by
virtue of its huge popularity, abbreviates more and looks more like text
messaging. They are not the same, however; at least they did not
start out that way. Any literate native speaker can start
chatting in any given environment, for example the hotel exchange mentioned above,
and chatters on the other end, regardless of how adept they are at texting or other
kinds of chat, can simply adapt by typing more standard semi-formal English. This
is fairly common, and can be observed any time an older teacher begins chatting
with more adept and more jaded texters (2).
Some effort has actually been made to reach out to the veteran texters, and engage
with them about their language, even use it in the process of teaching (3).
An interesting question arises about the learners who have entered English through
the use of texting English; who, perhaps, have logged hundreds of hours texting for
every formal sentence they've tried to produce. What effect does this have on their
progress? It's an open question (4).
MUD world chat
This is what the gamers play in
multi-user, gaming environments such as World of Warcraft and Runescape (5).
The chat here is part of the game, in that each player can speak to any
other player, or block a particular other player, so that one gets a
stream of chat when one plays, and can either respond or not respond.
If someone spends six or more hours a day in one of these environments,
we can say that they in effect have more experience with that language
than any other, and this is not uncommon, especially among young boys
in the US and in a host of other countries, including Korea and Japan. The question is really whether
this vast experience can give the gamer any advantage over the person
who is really much less familiar with the keyboard, or the appearance of
language on the computer screen. In a native language, a gamer will
type much more quickly than his/her classmates, but might get in
trouble, for example, by being unable to sit in a class or by any
keyboard for more than ten minutes without checking e-mail, or even
checking e-mail without being aware of how it might appear to people who
are standing right over him/her. The second-language gamer who enters
an ESL computer-supported learning environment has a more interesting
situation: what if one is introduced to English through one of these
games, and one spends hours learning and playing while using that chat
language? How does that influence one's learning, or one's later
experience with the larger, more formal language? I'm not sure, but
based on experience, I'd say that the gamer is more likely to be
intimidated by the difference between gaming chat and the formal language he/she
is trying to learn, intimidated especially by the awareness that the vulgarity and
abbreviation he/she is used to is so strongly stigmatized in the academic
world. The intimidation can lead to paralysis; yet the gamer, used to
presenting a polite face to the world, and at the same time venting
hostility by killing little electronic avatars on a playing field,
often hides the fact that in fact he/she carries around significant
skills - a familiarity with the keyboard, familiarity with browsers,
flexibility in variation of chat settings, etc.
ASCII chats
This
is a name given to languages that have sprung up using standard
English-letter (qwerty) keyboards but essentially another language.
ASCII Arabic is probably the most important and biggest (6), but the
Indian subcontinent has had many, and Africa has also (7). An ASCII chat takes
place when one or more typists does not have access to native language
script capability, and is forced to use ASCII (qwerty) characters to
replace the native script. People on both ends have to be able to
understand the ASCII characters, or it won't work, but this was no
problem for the users of these languages, most of whom had some training
in English. For example, ASCII chats were very common among computer
programmers from the Indian subcontinent, studying in the US, who wanted
to chat with colleagues back home by computer; before most keyboards had
Hindi capability, ASCII chats were easy, available, and convenient given
the fact that the vast majority of programmers and their colleagues had
familiarity with English letters and the sounds they were associated with
anyway. ASCII Arabic actually takes some English letters, and some
numbers also (I called it 3/5 chat for a while, since I saw a lot of 3's
and 5's in it; these are numbers that look like Arabic letters
and thus represent sounds). So a more correct characterization of the
script is that it combines basic English letters with English numbers
that look like Arabic letters- and, it spreads out words frequently,
much as chatters are likely to use looooool. But there are
remarkable features to ASCII Arabic which are important. First, ASCII
Arabic is still strong, and widely used, in spite of the fact that almost all computers
now have Arabic capability; some young people actually prefer it in many cases
over Arabic script (8). Second, because spoken dialects of Arabic are so
different from standard dialects, ASCII Arabic allows them to get closer
to their spoken dialect with their script than traditional Arabic; it
thus has become a major written source for descriptions of these
spoken dialects (9).
As one who has been accused of being a behaviorist before, I'll admit that
I believe that an activity that a student engages in many hours a day can and
does influence their learning later in the day. So what do I do when I find that my students
spend 3-5 hours a day typing in ASCII Arabic? Get them to talk about it;
ask them if it is helping them with their formal English. Get them to
describe why it is so difficult to use formal written English when they
are so used to ASCII Arabic. One can look at this situation as a test of
language learning principles. If people learn English in a natural
progression, then it shouldn't matter what they do with their free time;
we will teach them, they'll speak English in class, and they'll acquire
it naturally and effortlessly as a result of the positive things they
are doing in class. If, however, a set of similar but still different
habits is occupying most if not all of their free time, then will these
habits conflict with their new language? Will their habit of ignoring
punctuation, for example, cost them in papers, essays and exams? Time
will tell.
Truly bilingual chats
With these the advice becomes more difficult; we know so little about them.
Two places I know of where large communities of people know two languages, and
use them freely in electronic environments, are south Texas/north Mexico (Spanish-
English) and Taiwan (Mandarin-Taiwanese). I am very interested in these environments,
because in essence there are enough people fluent in two languages that chatters can
use whatever is most convenient from either language and fully expect people
at the other end to understand. The obvious question that arises is whether another
language, of consistently mixed grammar and vocabulary, can emerge from this situation.
Further questions: is this a good environment for a monolingual student to get
his/her feet wet with a new language? Does extensive time communicating in this venue
compromise one's ability to think or speak clearly and distinctly in a single one of them?
You may ask me to provide evidence that this even happens; at the moment, I don't have it (10).
I can only say that I believe truly bilingual chats are far more common now; that there is
a likelihood that they develop into dialects or languages of their own, mostly on the basis
of frequent use, distinctness in terms of online environment, and usefulness to people on both
sides of a given language divide; that, finally, we as teachers will see evidence of people
coming to us from this environment, and/or asking us about the value of using language in
it, and its effects on learning a formal language as they are practicing. At this point I
would not know what to tell them, though I have some idea. I'll save it for research.
Native language chats
Students may spend enormous
amounts of time chatting with their friends back home, or even across
the classroom, in their native languages. My attitude about this, I'll
admit, is different from that of most teachers I know, many of whom will
confiscate a bilingual dictionary in class, reprimand students for
speaking in native language, or even charge fines for doing so, to be used later for
end-of-term parties. My attitude is that they are adults (mine are,
anyway); they control their time and their fate; labeling their native
language as evil or wrong is pointless and counterproductive, as it
attacks the core of their being, and they are sure to fight back, if not
overtly, at least covertly. The major variable in their ability to learn
and master academic English is their willingness to study it and use it;
time spent doing other things may interfere, but mostly in terms of the
time itself, not specifically because of the language itself. This
partly contradicts the section above; it's true that, as the language
they are using approaches English in its structure and look, the
chances of it interfering with their English are greater (11). Any
activity that they do to the exclusion of studying is harmful by
default, but in general, the activities involved in chatting, including
reading & interpreting, typing, and mastery of browsers and programs
necessary to open and operate a chat, are good for them. The major
variable in their learning arc, so to speak, is how much time they
choose to spend, thinking, reading and writing in formal or
semi-formal English. Having good, meaningful assignments is the best way
to get to that point.
1. I have never actually put my students on online learning environments,
and so can't speak to the process; I have not even begun to carry out a
plan I have to set up a small but international conference involving my
students and experts in a given field, or at least people who would be
willing to talk to them in comprehensible English about a topic they want
to hear about. For example, I thought that, since our hometown is a former residence of
Buckminster Fuller, and home of a couple of domes modeled after his ideas,
we could do a project on learning more of these, and invite international
people to contribute. As sponsors, we could organize, hear interesting speeches,
and become experts on an interesting slice of architectural and American history.
2. Each person carries his or her idea of what will be understood on the other end,
and tries to adhere to that standard. In the presence of a respected teacher, the
natural tendency is to try to maintain a standard that the teacher will understand
and appreciate. This goal is not always achieved; informalities slip out.
3. My own attitude toward teaching with text-messaging is similar to that of the
communicative teacher who disdains teaching with the native language of his/her students,
since it reinforces habits of thinking in a language other than the one he/she is
teaching. I would also point out, though, that it never hurts for a teacher to
at least know something about the language his/her students are using with
so much of their time, thus becoming familiar with patterns they prefer and use
virtually without thinking. Carvin (2008) is a gateway to information about reaching
out to texters and harnessing their knowledge and skills; Sheneman (2007) mentioned
using it with ESL students.
4. The influence of texting on learning is debated in native teaching environments,
where grade school teachers decry the texting abbreviations that pop up on formal
exams and in other places. While anecdotally ESL/EFL teachers have also seen
abbreviated forms such as u, r, and thx on formal papers, the actual
"interference" caused by learning what is essentially another language is much
harder to document. If one learns two new languages at the same time, is the second
harder to learn because of the first? Is this impossible, inadvisable, or irrelevant?
Does the resemblance of text-English to formal English influence our answer to this
question? These are all research questions that I expect to be tackled in the near
future, perhaps with government grant money, but probably not by me.
5. World of Warcraft and Runescape are perhaps two of the
most popular; there are many more.
6. See Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003), below.
7. I know of no typology of ASCII chats, but would love to see one.
8. I hear this from my students.
9. This claim comes from Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003, see below).
10. I first encountered what I considered a truly bilingual Spanish-English chat zone
about a year ago, but have lost the link; it struck me as amazing that both languages were
bantered around so freely under the assumption that everyone knew everything. My Taiwanese
students this year made the same claim about Taiwanese-Mandarin; they said that on the island
virtually all young people spoke both, though they admitted that individually they may have a
preference for one or the other; but that, in any case, much of their electronic chatting occurred
using both frequently. Did they mix both the grammar and vocabulary? I asked them, and they responded,
yes, as with other young people today, true integration of languages and cultures was far more common
in their generation than, say with that of their parents, who were generally much more mono-linguistic
and less inclined to mix.
11. I owe the essence of this principle to Andreas Kotsoudas, a professor I had at Iowa. I will
look for the reference.
bibliography
Barker, T. (2009, March 13). Texting surges as tool
for more than just the young. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/sciencemedicine/story/
ECD541041F7853698625756E0012DB17?OpenDocument. Accessed 3-09.
Carvin, A. (2008, October 16). Should schools teach SMS text
messaging? learning.now, PBS Teachers. Accessed 1-09.
Leverett, T. (2008a, April). brb: Using chat in
an esl/efl writing class. From Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds, Demonstration, Writing IS, TESOL 2008, New
York City. http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/tw6.html.
___ (2008b, April). Digital fluency
as goal and objective. From Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds, Demonstration, Writing IS, TESOL 2008, New
York City. http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/tw4.html.
___ (2007a, Mar.). Fluency first:
Fluency as a construct. From Student weblogging
for fluency, skills and integration, Demonstration, Writing IS,
TESOL 2007, Seattle WA.
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/wf3.html
___ (2007b, May). Dialects in a
changing language. Global Study Magazine 4, 3. London. pp. 56-57.
Available online at:
http://globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/359.
Palfreyman, D. and al Khalil, M. (2003, Nov.). "A Funky
Language for Teenzz to Use": Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant
Messaging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9 (1).
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/palfreyman.html. Accessed 10-08.
Sheneman, K. (2007, May 3).
Teaching through text message. The Rebel Yell, Univ. of Nevada Las Vegas.
http://archive.unlvrebelyell.com/article.php?ID=10765. Accessed 1-09.
Text messaging. (n.d.). Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging. Accessed 1-09.
1. Presentation home
2. Introduction & table of contents
3. Chat & esl/efl bibliography
4. where u at w/chat weblog
[ CESL ][ Tom Leverett's weblog ]
from the interfaith, from TL's pop collection
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Thomas
Leverett, CESL, SIUC
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