TEXTING LINGO

Now that you have given your opinion about the influence of the Internet on languages, I would like you to watch this video where David Crystal, a well-known professor of linguistics and important editor for Cambridge University Press, proves his theory on a BBC programme called "It's Only a Theory", his theory being: "Texting is good for the English language". 



Take note of his arguments to prove his theory and send me a SpeakPipe with the main arguments in his theory. Do you think he made his point?

Deadline: Tuesday 29th

It is a fact that texting has become a new genre of  communication. 

Check the periodic table of texting below:

Try the matching exercise below and learn some of the most common texting abbreviations.

Now try translating the following text messages into common language.

This is part of an essay written by a Scottish 13-year-old secondary school pupil. Work in pairs reading the texting and ‘translating’ it into English.

"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2 go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- @ kds FTF. ILNY, its gr8. Bt my Ps wr so {:-/ BC o 9/11 tht thay dcdd 2 stay in SCO & spnd 2 wks up N. Up N, WUCIWUG -- 0. I ws vvv brd in MON. 0 bt baas & ^^"

Make your own dialogues in this site with the help of this other site and send me the screenshot.


Look at the infographic below and try to get the information needed to answer these questions:

• How many mobile phones are there in the world?
• Which country has the highest number of phone subscribers?
• Who holds the record for the fastest typing on a phone?
• What did she type?
• How fast can you type it?

Finally, a couple of jokes:

Internet Influence on Language

"To Google" has become a universally understood verb and many countries are developing their own internet slang. But is the web changing language and is everyone up to speed? The Internet's impact on society in general and on language in particular has raised opposing standpoints. Listen to the article and try to fill in the blanks in the activity in your course. You needn't send me any results. They will automatically appear in your grade chart.

I'm displaying the activity here in case some of you have some connection difficulties and need to do it in the blog and send me the results. Deadline: Thrusday 10th

Now I would like to know your opinion about the matter. You can do some research to try to answer these questions accurately: What do you think of the impact of Internet and mobile messaging on language? Language itself changes slowly but, do you think the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly? Do you think those changes are for the better or for the worse? Has the language you used on the Internet influenced your academic written language? Being English the lingua franca on the Internet, do you think there is a new linguistic imperealism that leads to the destruction of other languages or cultures? Do you ever use English in your social web interactions? ...





Deadline: Wednesday 16th

A GAP YEAR PROJECT

As Problem-Based learning in the English as a Second Language classroom, you are going to work in the project designed below. You should do some research work, define your task, discard irrelevant information and get the valuable one, digest it and present it to your classmates in the most attractive and explanatory way you can find.

GROUPS	PRESENTATION DATES
Jose, Ricardo, Irene, Isaac	Wednesday 30th
Zoraida, Carmen, Lucia, Laura	Monday 21st
Paola, Laura, Nora, Miriam	Monday 28th
Sergio, Ivan, Maria, Manuel	Monday 21st
Ines, Guillermo, Paula	Monday 28th