Tech blamed (again) for student shortcomings

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 26 April 2007 13:06

Your IT - Mobility

If there's a perceived shortcoming among young people, technology is an easy scapegoat. The Irish State Examination Commission's chief examiner is blaming text messaging for poor writing skills displayed in English exams.

While it may be true that communication via SMS and instant messaging puts a premium on brevity at the expense of spelling and punctuation, how many school students complete classwork and assignments via text messaging? Very few, I suggest.

While texting habits may lead to the occasional abbreviation slipping in to formal writing, they should be treated as if they were spelling mistakes. One or two may be overlooked; more frequent errors should be marked down. (I believe that's the New Zealand examiners' policy.)

If it is true that 15 and 16 year old Irish students are "choosing to answer sparingly, even minimally, rather than seeing questions as invitations to explore the territory they had studied and to express the breadth and depth of their learning and understanding" as the examiner claims, then I'd suggest they are not being properly prepared for the exams.

While there's more to education than examinations and I'd hate to see teachers merely 'teaching to the test,' it seems to me that every student - regardless of their level of ability and depth of knowledge in the subject - should go into an exam knowing exactly what constitutes a good answer to any particular type of question.

So perhaps the examiner should look at teaching practices before blaming the mobile phone for poor literacy.