I'm feeling post-happy today (parse that however you wish), so here's my take...

While this editorial does rise above the usual curmudgeonly hand-wringing that laments what "the kids" are up to, and while as a writing teacher I, too, cringe when I encounter informal writing in a formal context, I have yet to encounter a student who is incapable of switching to a more formal mode when the situation requires it. [Am I alone? Are there such students out there?] In my experience, students who are used to typing thoughts off the top of their headts need a lot more practice in pre-writing (including research) and heavy revision (rather than focusing on making the green and red wavy lines disappear from their MS-Word documents).

Just as the arrival of the automobile threatened the trade of horseshoeing but opened up a huge new realm of possibilities, I think that students who grow up socializing on IM develop the ability to think on their feet, react quickly to changing situations, multitask, and do all sorts of other things that were really hard for our ancestors to learn while scratching out their lessons in their log cabins.

Teachers need to adjust their methods, in order to draw upon the strengths that our students bring with them into the classroom.

I couldn't agree more. The use of informal IM chat in a formal paper is a big deal only becuase (supposedly) the student has not realized the discursive conventions of the community to which s/he is writing. But being able to write "efficiently" in IM shouldn't be taken as evidence of a lack of higher-order thinking. I'd rather have students in my class who do write frequently, email or IM or whatever, as opposed to those who only write when they have to.

I tyhink the example the editorial gives that written letters from hundreds of years ago can still be "read with appreciation" tells us something about the way in which the "distance" assumed when writing a letter (a formal document) necessarily demands some context-setting, something I would expect in other formaldocuments as well, but not in an electronic conversation.

PS: I think I'm a bit post-happy as well, end of semester and all. And after months of having to use Netscape to log in to Kairosnews, my IE log in began working again. Go figure.

I'm with you guys. I immediately threw the flag when I read the author say,

"If they don't learn how to use the written word to communicate the kind of complex concepts that the colonists wanted to convey to King George, they may well find themselves speechless when the course of human events demands eloquence."

IM speak is a particular style and vocabulary. By no means does that imply that it cannot communicate complex concepts.

I'm wondering, too, if perhaps the way to think of IM speak is as a dialect?

Today, in a graduation portfolio presentation today at the high school where I teach this came up in our Q&A. The student, an immigrant from Bangladesh, explained that he often uses IM with friends back in his country. He explained that they've developed a hybrid English IM-speak - transliterated verison of their language using the English alphabet. He commented that he uses IM often and it creeps into his academic writing at times but he usually catches it. Interesting coming from a non-native speaker.

I'm wondering, too, if perhaps the way to think of IM speak is as a dialect?

Naah. It's just non-standard orthography. Maybe it's a linguistic code, but I don't think the grammar and vocabulary is different enough for a dialect.

Any linguists out there?

cbd.