Teenagers on social networking sites are creating a new language experts say. Among the many variations that teenager’s language (considered a new chronolect) shows is the excessive use of abbreviations. However, I would like to say that this phenomenon is not restricted to teenagers exclusively since it is possible to find messages written by adults following the same fashion. However, this time I’m going to focus on the use of abbreviations by adolescents.
I’ve heard countless times teachers voicing their concern about the possibility of students transferring the new code they use from the Web to the classroom. They fear this would result in the use of abbreviations in essays for example. As regards this possibility, David Crystal makes a very interesting talk which you can see here .
Whether you can take a look at it or not (I advise you do), I would like to summarize Crystal’s main ideas and comment on them. He states that there are a number of myths surrounding why teenagers make use of abbreviations in text messages and in the Web (For example in Twitter).
People believe that this new text messaging thing and tweeting thing is full of abbreviations introduced by young people for a number of different reasons, which he regards as total myths.
MYTH N° 1: Teenagers are deliberately trying to create a new language so that parents do not understand what they are up to. Crystal counteracts this by saying that only 10 percent of the words found in Tweets and text messages are abbreviations and that 80% of all the people that text message are adults (not teenagers).
MYTH N° 2: Adolescents abbreviate inadvertently because they don’t know how to spell words. Crystal tries to debunk this myth by saying that the reason why teenagers abbreviate is because it’s economic and more efficient or just fashionable or cool.
MYTH N° 3: Abbreviations are the result of a generation that does not longer know how to spell. In order to counteract this new myth, he says that texting is writing and reading on a mobile phone. He adds that although people say that these days children do not read, in fact they are reading in order to text well. To carry out these processes, they need to be quite literate. And since they are literate, they can spell.
MYTH Nº 4: The last myth says that in school, children do not know the difference between how to spell correctly or incorrectly and that they are so careless that they put abbreviations into their exams. Crystal claims that young people are aware of what exactly the difference is between the style of language that has been designed to be used in cell phones or in the Web and that they need to use in their essays.
He concludes by saying that we are still in a mindset where we see the book as central and the electronic technology as marginal while for children this is the other way round. So, one way of managing this would be to put the book into electronic technology. Furthermore, he points that teachers should replace the black and white notion of correct/incorrect language by the recognition and acceptance that there are different styles and that each style has its own purpose. He says that one interesting activity to develop an awareness of appropriacy is to give students an essay and ask them to turn that into a text message or vice versa.
Personally, I totally agree with Crystal’s counterarguments. Though it may be true that some teenagers transfer language appropriate to the Web into academic writings, I think they are the exception rather than the rule. I do believe that teenagers are intelligent enough to differentiate different styles of the language as well as the contexts in which they should use them. In cases where people do use too informal expressions or abbreviations in an academic context, it may be that they have never been taught to draw the appropriate distinction. I think that raising our students’ awareness of the existence of different styles is essential. In my view, schools tend to center their curriculums on the development of formal writing skills that are in most cases too detached from the learners’ daily experience. I do not mean that we should stop teaching how to write a letter because there are circumstances in which we may need to write one and students should be trained to do that. However, I think it vital to include in the curriculum genres which are closer to the adolescents’ experience such as the mail (now included in almost all textbooks) and the text message. Students should learn to compare and contrast the various genres available and make appropriate choices whenever they write. As regards Crystal's opinion about teenagers’ reading habits at present, he mentions that children do read. I agree with him in that they read different texts (Mind you, it was not easy to get convinced of that). The problem is that we belong to a generation that was for years only in contact with books: they were both sources of knowledge and pleasure as they delighted us with their many stories. It’s being hard to me to accept that nowadays children prefer reading e-mails, postings and comments of any kind rather than classics.
I am convinced that children read (though not the kind of texts I would like them to) and that they are totally capable of showing discernment in the choice of the language they need to use in a particular context. Nevertheless, they may probably need some explicit teaching and training at using the different forms of the language appropriately. And this is a task that we need to tackle in our own classrooms.
This picture is a parody of the supposed way in which teenagers write. The humorous effect is achieved by a reversal of expectations. Any person would expect students rather than teachers to spell words this way. 
In the second picture, we see exemplified one of the reasons why people use abbreviations: To economize on words and effort. We live in an era where a high value is attached to instantaneity. Thus, shorthand writing is successful because they epitomize immediacy. However, although the use of abbreviations is gaining more and more ground, I am of the opinion that they will never spoil the quality of academic writing. I do believe in the capacity of people to discern between internet slang and language appropriate to the more formal educational setting. If students were to start using abbreviations inadvertently at schools, we can use each of these instances as a "teachable moment", as an opportunity to teach the differences between formal and informal writing. I believe teachers will never let their use become naturalised. 
Personally, all these years, I was devoted to this course of studies round-the-clock. Mind you, I do not regret devoting that much time to study (If I hadn’t, things wouldn’t have gone as well as they did) but I do say that it’s difficult to slow down. And sometimes, that’s vital. Sometimes we are so obsessed about finishing our studies in the prescribed time, that we find ourselves trying to cope with everything. I say ‘trying’ because sometimes we just try but are unable to complete all our assignments on time. 