Mokytojai apie informacinių technologijų poveikį mokinių raštingumui

BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 RITA MILIŪNAITĖ Lietuvių kalbos institutas TEACHERS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IMPACT ON STUDENT LITERACY KEY WORDS: spelling, literacy, written language, school written language, language teaching, electronic communication. INTRODUCTION This article is the third in a series of articles that examine the attitude of Lithuanian teachers to spelling teaching, the peculiarities of school written language and the problems of illiteracy among pupils that have become particularly prominent in recent times, as well as their causes. The school written language is understood as a variant of the general Lithuanian language, which is used in the educational process, when pupils perform various writing tasks at school and at home. Students’ written language is a broader concept, because the same students also use written language in their leisure time, but it is private, not school, and has been created in the last decade with the emergence of wide-ranging electronic communication opportunities. Thus, today’s pupils, unlike their parents’ generation at the time, use two variants of written language almost equally (at least in terms of the amount of time they spend on study and leisure)1. They also differ in that the majority of school writing tasks are done by hand, while in private written language they almost exclusively use electronic means of communication with a keyboard (mobile phones, computers, tablets). When studying the language of pupils and its changes, such a difference in written language variants is necessary to better highlight the peculiarities of each of them and show their interaction. The aim of the article is to confirm or refute the hypothesis that the spelling skills developed in the private written language of pupils using information technologies (hereinafter – IT) strongly affect the school written language. First, the article briefly describes the nature of the survey and the answers received. The following shows how teachers describe the overall impact of IT on pupils’ literacy-related behaviour and examines in detail the manifestations of IT impact on school written language reported by teachers. They are compared with the characteristics of the private written language of the students. At the end of the article, there are notes summarizing the results of both this article and the entire cycle of studies. 1 Interestingly, when describing the language used by their parents in electronic communication, adolescents see clear differences from their own language in the electronic medium: parents using significantly fewer non-normative forms, writing very few abbreviations, etc. (see Meškerevičiūtė 2011: 10). BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 2 1. TEACHERS QUESTIONNAIRE ON STUDENT LITERACY PROBLEMS Mixed type survey of Lithuanian speakers at the Lithuanian Language Institute during the „Kieti riešutėliai“2 dalies, skirtos rašybos įgūdžiams įtvirtinti, darbus, buvo surengta mokytojų preparation of the educational computer game3. Although this survey was not very representative, as volunteer teachers of different ages and nationalities responded to the invitation to participate, the detailed answers, supported by numerous examples, give a picture of how teachers themselves describe and assess literacy problems in school. Thus, the survey data can be used to prepare representative surveys on this topic. It should be emphasized that in this survey teachers were asked about the students’ written work at school and at home, rather than about their electronic communication in their leisure time, so the answers were based on school rather than private written language data. One of the articles in this series, based on teachers’ answers, examined how teachers evaluate their students’ writing skills, what differences in literacy they see related to the students’ age, and what electronic teaching tools they use to teach the language (see Vasiliauskas 2013: 27–31). The second article was devoted to teachers’ opinions about the reasons for the deterioration of pupils’ literacy (see Miliūnaitė 2013: 192–211). One of them is the impact of information technology on students’ writing skills. Why was a teacher survey chosen to investigate the signs of IT influence in the written school language, rather than directly studying the students’ own writings? Both approaches to addressing the problem are important, and each has its own advantages. Teachers know the pupils best and can compare the previous literacy situation in the school from their own experience, because the problem itself is formulated as the appearance of certain changes in the defined area of Lithuanian language use. In the teachers' answers there are indeed such comparisons, for example: Yes, there are such mistakes that I could not even dream of ten years ago, for example: vaikuj4 (user), keulė, does not put checks on ž, š, does not want to put dots on ė anymore. Much more often than five years ago, pupils do not check the letters ž, š, do not write nasal letters at the ends (what? – galva, stala), use the letter w. Teachers’ opinion about the peculiarities of their pupils’ literacy, unlike the direct study of pupils’ language, allows not only to identify the characteristics of pupils’ written language, but also to associate those characteristics with the assumptions of their emergence, to reveal the reasons for literacy changes, and at the same time forms a more objective picture of all processes related to pupils’ literacy. 2 For more information about the educational games of this series see http://www.kalbosnamai.lt/index.php?option=com_content&t ask=view&id=22&Itemid=36. 3 The 8th questionnaire, published in 2012 on the adjacent website of the Lithuanian Language Institute “Kalbos namai”, received 120 answers from 95 Lithuanian schools of various profiles (see http://www.kalbosnamai.lt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143&Itemid=69). 4 In the teachers’ answers, the words and letters whose spelling is discussed are always highlighted in italics. In other cases, the language of the teachers was not corrected (Red.). BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 3 2. SURVEY QUESTIONS ON IT EXPOSURE OF STUDENTS FOR LITERACY The problem of the impact of IT on pupils’ literacy was given a separate focus of the survey: Do you notice that the habits and habits caused by information technology (mobile phones, computers) affect the spelling of students? If so, what is the effect? These questions cover two implicit aspects of the impact of IT on students’ written language: the technical means of electronic communication and the social and psychological environment created by such communication. On the first question – do teachers notice the impact of IT on pupils’ spelling – 87.5% of teachers responded positively. Thus, in the eyes of teachers, this effect is obvious and strong. The negative impact is felt by pupils of all age groups, not excluding even elementary students who already use IT: Since I teach elementary children, the impact is not yet very felt, but according to my older daughter (she is in seventh grade), I feel that the fashion to write differently is very strong. Children [teenagers] who frequently use mobile phones do not write the letters ě, ž, š. The teachers themselves assessed the impact of IT on the literacy of students (although this was not asked in the survey questionnaire) from the strongest to zero: “terrible impact – children are practically illiterate”, “very strong impact”, “great impact” to “no impact”. However, only two teachers note that the impact of IT on literacy deterioration is reflective: The students themselves admit that the impact of information technology was very high a few years ago. At present, some students are trying to write text messages and comments on the Internet correctly. But recently I don’t notice the deterioration of spelling due to IT, the young people do it among themselves, with the older ones they try to write as they should, especially if the teacher pays attention to it. From these individual answers it can be concluded that these are considerable exceptions, apparently depending a lot on the teacher’s ability to influence the students’ thinking and habits in the opposite direction. Some of the teachers’ answers were short, only confirming the negative impact of IT on students’ spelling: The impact is definitely negative. Taip, labai veikia, neigiamai. He can't write properly. Negative, ignores spelling rules. General literacy has decreased significantly. Most of the answers to this question were much more detailed, for example: BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 4 Strongly affects. Bring a computer-compiled text and know that it will not be evaluated, that is, no dots on ė, no matter what i, u, there are no nasals at the end, shorten the words lb (labai), mums, Jum, tuom, kuo. It seems to be an elementary word, but it is difficult for students to spell it correctly, because they are used to shortening words and using non-Lithuanian characters in their messages. Sometimes, while writing, students ask how this or that letter looks like, because they simply forget it... and not fifth graders do that. Responding to the second question, what effect IT has on the students’ spelling, the teachers pointed out various features of the written school language, in their eyes, related to the fact that students use IT for electronic communication, for example: It is much harder to teach long-short vowels, nasal spelling in the root of words, humorous spelling, because only after learning the rule and applying it in practice in the class, they do not use this knowledge almost nowhere else, even in the online space or when communicating with mobile phones. Rarely, but there are some students who write “messages” in the notebook. These teachers’ answers are discussed in the following article. They are written in a free form, so after the initial investigation, all the signs of the students’ writing indicated by the teachers as resulting from the influence of IT were selected and the frequency of their mention was statistically calculated. 3. IT’S IMPACT ON STUDENTS’ BEHAVIOUR RELATED TO WRITENING TRAINING In their answers, teachers often refer not only to the specific features of the language of the students’ writings, but also try to relate them to the behaviour of the students, which is influenced by IT, which has become part of their lives from an early age. Having more work experience, teachers compare students of today and earlier times and claim that behavior has changed. It can be distinguished by several characteristic features. Teachers note that students’ writing habits have changed: students have developed fast writing. Increased distraction, omitted letters. [Students] throw out vowels from words and in other ways, Taip, žinoma, poveikis yra. Visų pirma, skubėjimas. Mokiniai jaučia didžiulį nepasitenkinimą, kai reikia “speed up” writing. to find the error, explain why we do so. I would argue that this is not a matter of fashion, but a harmful habit. Especially after longer holidays, such as summer, you have to fight for about a month to get the children to the level they were before the holidays. The students’ writing culture and orderliness have deteriorated, they do not understand what “let’s write further from the margins” means, “we need to remind them more often that there are margins”. Pupils no longer trying to learn, seeing “the tendency to write anyhow”, they do not feel the need to improve: Nebegalvoja, kaip taisyklingai parašyti, neugdomas įprotis. nededa „paukščiuko“ ar taškelio virš raidės ir teisinasi, kad tai nėra svarbu – jis tik pamiršo. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 5 Often they are surprised when they find a marked error: “But this is just a dot…” Students are more indifferent to spelling, rejectingly correcting written essays. Less effort to express thoughts accurately and correctly. Thus, the students, in the eyes of the teachers, became more indifferent to science, distracted, inattentive, doing everything hastily, carelessly and rejecting. Therefore, the need for order is not developed, the meaning of correct writing is not understood. The correct writing seems out of fashion, because "thanks to information technology, they have created their own writing systems". Such changes are not accidental, judging by the answers to the survey, they can be described as a pronounced tendency. 4. DESCRIPTION OF IT’S IMPACT ON STUDENT LITERACY Researches on the language used in electronic communication in Lithuania are still very few and fragmentary (see publications on the language of IRC chat messages – Zelenkauskaite, Herring 2006: 1–17; spelling of short messages – Nevinskaitė 2010: 275–296; spelling of Skype chats – Meškerevičiūtė 2011: 9–15). When examining the impact of IT on written language in general, the foreign literature refers to the following most pronounced signs of this effect (for more details see. Androutsopoulos 2011: 145–159): 1) writing becomes a transcription of spoken language, i.e. it is written as it is spoken; 2) writing attempts to compensate for the expression of direct communication (to use special signs to mark facial expressions, gestures, emotions, intonations); 3) due to the rapid pace of electronic communication, a language economy strategy is applied (abbreviation of the form of expression in various ways). This is mainly characteristic of free electronic communication, but, as will be seen from the answers of the teachers of the survey, many of these characteristics or at least their embryos have also school written language. 4.1. General signs of IT exposure (incorrect spelling habits) Many of the characteristics of school written language identified by the teachers are the result of the direct transfer of electronic communication skills to writing (sometimes computer-based), cf. : [Students write differently] not because they do not know the rules, but because they are used to writing text messages in this way. He is very,,fluttery“ and this is already becoming a serious problem, he does not write nosines, uses a lot of abbreviations, throws out vowels from words and in all other ways,,speeds up“ writing. Some students even dare to explain to me when sending their papers that their computer does not have,,Lithuanian letters”... Yes, on the phone and on the computer they write without dots, commas, jargon. Then he writes it in his notebooks. [...] when it is only necessary to write the missing letters in the test, children usually do not make such mistakes. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 RITA MILIŪNAITĖ. Mokytojai apie informacinių technologijų poveikį mokinių raštingumui | 6 Matyti, kad apskritai rašytinės mokinių kalbos ypatumus daug lemia tiek įprotis skubėti, both the limited technical capabilities of the electronic communication tools used. This clearly affects the school written language; these effects are described by teachers using specific examples. The characteristics of school written language, which have arisen as a result of the influence of IT, are distinguished in the teachers’ answers on more than one logical basis, therefore it is difficult to systematize them. In this article this is done minimally, because this time it is important to present their frequency in the school written language as observed by the teachers themselves. 4.2. Unused Lithuanian letters with diacritics This tendency was mentioned most often by teachers – 98 times. The answers of the same teacher may include several indicators, such as: [...] if we take the QWERTY keyboard, it actually does not work ąčęęįšůúz line. ICT has done young people a bad service - there are no more ė, ū, nasal letters, checks, sh, zh have become “fashionable” substitutes for š, ž. In many cases, the tendency to avoid diacritics is concreted. 1) Unwritten nasal letters5 (48 mentions): gets used to writing without nasal forgets nasal letters in the endings (e.g., gal. – raide, mielaji, knyga, etc., etc.; part. vns. and dgs. – parėje, suskubes, šąlas, vešias, etc.). when writing a linked text more and more often do not use nosals (ę, į, ų). 2) Not writing birds (ticks) on the letters č, š, ž (40 mentions, thus a quarter of the teachers participating in the survey): pay less attention to ticks whistles; begins to write a delicate text confusing s with š, ž with z The habit of writing sh, ž is disappearing. Two teachers note that the absence of birds is sometimes compensated by the two-letter sh, zh, although this would seem unlikely in school writing tasks6: 5 It is understood that the nosines may not be written for another reason – lack of knowledge of spelling rules, but to distinguish where this feature is determined by IT-created habits and where functional illiteracy is not possible at this stage of the research. In general, it is assumed that the two causes are actually intertwined and influence each other. 6 Example: “Teenagers are characterized by creativity and a desire to stand out in their interaction with others. But I certainly do not believe that our children during Lithuanian language lessons would intentionally not write nosiniai or replace the letter “š” with a diphthong “sh””, – did not doubt Prieiga VDU akademinės bendruomenės atstovė.“ (Arnoldo Aleksandravičiaus interviu su Ineta Dabašinskiene. internete: http://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/kas-labiausiai-griauna-lietuviu-kal bos-sis tema.d?id= 61597537#ixzz2sXppYzBR). But there is nothing to be surprised, because spelling is in most cases an automated, deliberately little controlled process; if a person is accustomed to cursing every day, he sometimes curses uncontrollably on television. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 7 Instead of sh, sh, zh, sh, zh substitutes appear. When typing on a keyboard without Lithuanian letters, this phenomenon is rare, except for short messages, where the user tries to use as few characters as possible (see Nevinskaitė 2010: 285). 3) The letter ū is not written, it is confused with u (7 mentions): there is a tendency to stop writing ū at all, confusing the vowels u and ū. 4) Dots are not written on the letters ė, i, į, j in handwritten works (35 mentions): there are more frequent cases of writing without dots over ė, i, į, j (they forget them) dots on ė are not considered a serious matter dots on ė are not added and even do not want to accept that e and ė are different letters Mostly [IT works] – ė spelling (sedeti, skrybele; atvėjis). [Because of typing on the computer or phone] they (in this case I am talking about the more skilled students) often no longer see the difference between ě and e. Of course, the absence of dots on the i and j can be considered a matter of fashion, which is not very dangerous for the writing system itself7. It is quite another thing not to distinguish the letters e and ė, which denote different sounds and reflect different phonemes that perform the distinguishing function of words (see meta and mėta, atves and atvės). There is another effect mentioned by the teachers, which is beginning to become apparent due to the spelling without diacritics. IT-influenced spelling in turn affects the pupil's pronunciation: Probably, [IT] affects the spelling of the genitive and dative endings. The children do not even read these jokes correctly. He says: I see a book. T. p., although they write (still!), tend not to make ė. Such things are observed about 2-3 years. Non-Lithuanian characters w, x are used (8 mentions): w is used instead of v, w appears instead of ks – x in the writings. Although such cases, as can be judged from the answers to the survey, are not many, but they show that students sometimes transfer even elements of a completely different system – foreign alphabets – with which they have become acquainted using IT, into school papers, thus not being able to switch from one writing system to another. 7 Plg. The document approved by the Director of the National Examination Centre in 2013 “Evaluation criteria for the task of the Lithuanian language and literature state maturity examination”, where the following explanation is given: “Grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation errors are not duplicated and are considered separate errors, except in the following cases: (a) where the dots are not written on i, j, one error is considered for the whole work, but where the dots are not written on ė, each error is considered separately.’ Access on the Internet: http://www.egzaminai.lt/failai/3938_instrukcija_LT_VBE_2013-11-15r.pdf. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 8 4.4 Instead of i, especially at the end of the word, j is written (5 mentions): they themselves admit that it becomes difficult not to write ej in the noun syllable instead of the necessary ei taj, paskuj, kaj, taj, vaikuj diphthong ui [ima] write uj Common j spelling at the end of words: tajp, taj. This feature can be interpreted both as a kind of fashion and as a result of writing from hearing. The Internet usage shows that in the private language of students, j sometimes appears in the middle of a word, for example vajkas. Various abbreviations are used8 (28 mentions): shorten words lb (very) and sentences when writing essays use abbreviations (lb, nzn, kdl and others) throw out vowels omitted vowels, consonants write abbreviations: nzn, ok, gr and others there are abbreviations of words not based on any rules, such as tj (that), atvž (come). 4.6. Proper nouns are written in lowercase, and common nouns are sometimes capitalized (6 mentions): Sadly, more and more often they make spelling mistakes of actual nouns, sometimes even write their name in lowercase, let alone Lithuania... real and common objects spelling (Lithuania, Lithuanians). 4.7 Sentences after a period begin with a lowercase letter (7 mentions): begins a sentence with a lowercase letter sometimes writes another sentence after a period with a lowercase letter does not distinguish the boundaries of the sentence no longer distinguishes the boundaries of the sentences, does not put punctuation marks. 8 In an interview in 2014, Lithuanian teacher Aldona Šventickienė also noted this particularity: “When I started teaching the class of current graduates, I was very surprised to see that in the 11th grade they wrote half a word in their essays – just like in short messages. I insisted that there must be a full word, so this year there is no longer that problem, but at the beginning of the 11th grade it was indeed so” (Smolskienė 2014). BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students’ literacy | 9 4.8. Write as you hear: 1) e and ia are conjugated, e.g. če, keulė (2 mentions). 2) not written j (1 mention): Dažniausiai rašo jieško vietoj ieško (man atrodo keistas toks rašymas trumposiose žinutėse, nes vietoj abbreviation is written one more letter). 3) errors are made in the assimilation of consonants (4 mentions): there is no ts, instead of them immediately c, e.g.: aciprašau. 4.9. Non-alphanumeric electronic communication characters used (4 mentions): In writing works try to express emotions by symbols instead of the period at the end of the sentence often appears a smiley. 4.10 The means of expression of the free electronic communication style are transferred to the school written language: 1) strong influence of free electronic communication style (18 mentions). Some teachers note that the intensive use of IT by pupils “has a great effect not on spelling, but on the style of speech itself”, the ways of creating texts; writing style deteriorating, students introducing "their own" writing style. The most characteristic signs of a changed student style are: a) decreases the stock of means of language expression, especially vocabulary: deprived of vocabulary poor vocabulary The language is poor. They don't know what "storm" and "wind" mean... [IT] has an effect on the vocabulary - very impoverishing. the vocabulary of students who use adjectives little becomes very poor; b) simplification of sentence construction: It is more difficult to formulate sentences. the banality of sentence constructions cannot extend the sentences in writing the most common connective word which, in sentences it is repeated several times Rarely, but there are some students who also write "messages" in the notebook; BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 Rita Miliūnaitė. Teachers about the impact of information technology on students' literacy | 16 take full advantage of the opportunities offered by language. The written school language attributes indicated by teachers can be referred to in further research of pupils’ language and in search of ways to mitigate the negative effects of the free written language on the written school language in particular and on pupils’ literacy in general. KEYWORDS: orthography, literacy, written language, language acquisition, computer-mediated communication. RITA MILIŪNAITĖ Lietuvių kalbos institutas Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected]