What this? Me not understand. Me confused by words put together. Me only like games go boom! Yep, apparently one researcher has studied some blogs and the speech patterns of teens over in Britain, and has come to the inclusion that "partly" because of videogames, teenagers have a less than stellar vocabulary. Or, oh, I don't know, maybe it's because they are teenagers! Next thing you know someone will be blaming Spongebob Squarepants for kindergarten children not knowing what an onomatopoeia is.
But he says there is a serious point to the work, which is to highlight what he sees as the neglect of verbal communication skills in schools.
"While the school curriculum shows a strong focus on literacy, speech has been relatively neglected in the curriculum," he said.
Employers often complained that new employees were unable to answer the telephone in the formal way required of them for work and that they were also intimidated by speaking formally in meetings, the professor added.
He put this down to a lack of training and the overuse of technologies such as computer games and MP3 players.
"This trend, known as technology isolation syndrome, could lead to problems in the classroom and then later in life.
"Employers are already complaining that first jobbers are lacking basic verbal communication and it seems things could be set to get worse.
"Kids need to get talking and develop their vocabulary."
I think thats just utter
I think thats just utter garbage. I cant believe that someone is trying to pin difficulties with "speaking formally" in youths, on technology. It shows they are completely ignorant of what they are trying to blame. How about blaming these problems with youths on something you can clearly see has negative affects. Maybe underaged drinking, smoking, sleeping around and generally being a menace to society becuase its "cool", eh?
Perhaps the fact that teens dont consider being well spoken "cool" is the real problem. Maybe they just took one look at a random first person shooter and decided it was a symptom, but ignored some of the massively text heavy games out there. Or many other forms of technology that increase your intelligence, not just leech braincells. What? Reading a book can improve your vocabularly, but reading text on a screen cant? Well blow me.
Maybe they should try to encourage them to play more games that are well written. Perhaps then, they wouldnt mould their every word and action on trying to act like badasses. Then maybe we wouldnt have them stuck for words in their jobs?
I really think they see the problem as "technology" becuase of the amount of msn conversations and text messages, that seem to be written in a completely different language. So it seems that literacy isnt as much of a curriculum focus when people are prepared to write "U comn 4 a drnk 2nyt?" in their messages. Surely doing that all the time has a negative impact on how you communicate?