Friday 15 April 2011

Voluntary Dyslexia

I'm becoming genuinely concerned for the deterioration of our English language, over the last fifteen years we've seen the introduction of so many news ways to communicate, gone are the days of actually sitting down to write a letter, think about it, how many times have you actually struggled to find a pen and paper when asked to do so the end result being you actually end up writing on the side of a cereal box or pretending to write it down.


New age communication all started with the text message, to begin with we didn't really welcome it with open arms, but fiercely this faceless piece of communication has embedded itself into our society and spread across the world like a strain of virus tearing apart our ability to spell and be grammatically correct, fifteen years on and the virus has split our society into two, those who wish to respect our English language and those who have become so lacking in intelligence they've forgotten how to use it.


What's even more shocking is that our Government has even considered allowing text speak in examinations, the education system we provide to students is a foundation step to forming the UK of tomorrow and a measure of the student's intelligence and ability, how can we possibly excuse a student's stupidity?


To be quite frank I think it's rather alarming that a Government would even consider it, surely by the examination stage a teacher should have identified their student's lack of ability to grasp the English language, or was he/she to engrossed in.. "Wht R U @ dis wekend"


This new 'voluntary dyslexia' has leaked it's way into every piece of communication available, when you log onto facebook it's there, when I receive emails at work from professionals it's there, it is no longer just reserved for a quick text message, people are starting to adapt text speak as their foundation language, it's become it's own language. I just get so frustrated when there is a fully functional key board sitting in front of someone that they still fail to complete a sentence.


This new group of people displaying a hindering of progress in normal communication functionality are becoming socially inept, it's now a prerequisite for many people that a prospective friend or partner has the ability to string a sentence together. We would never socially exclude someone with dyslexia, we're supportive because it's not within their control, but the ultimate frustration with people who reverberate this new age language through everything that they do is because it's voluntary!


Looking at how bad it has become and that I can clearly see I'm not the only person who can see it, lets have a look at what you do to help your friend that suffers from voluntary dyslexia;


I've listed a few treatments-


1) When your friend sends you a text reply with- "I didn't understand that grammatical mess could you reword it in the English language and send it back to me?


2) Only ever send your friend perfectly punctuated, spelt and grammatical master pieces in every bit of communication you send, should they text you back and ask you to reword I would be concerned that voluntary dyslexia may no longer be voluntary.


3)Buy your friend a book, I know this may be breaking boundaries, but they may be pleasantly surprised to learn that the English language does still exist in it's fullest form, don't buy Shakespeare, think of this first book like foundation English and think of Shakespeare as advanced, on that I would even consider Harry Potter as advanced as the made up words in Harry Potter may only increase confusion with your friend, the last thing we want is that your language ignorant friend tries to enrol at Hogwarts to improve their English.


If the treatments don't work then most definitely give up, I wouldn't bother attempting any type of pilgrimage to rescue the English language, you'd probably most likely find a note when you get there-


"Gne In2 hIdin cn't cpe wit dis"


I'm not asking that anyone becomes a sesquipedalian (one who uses long words) but a great start would be that you ensure that you never fall victim to this horrid virus, which in essence is just blatant stupidity. 

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