Comprehension - Email sends coded warning to English teachers

Exercise 2

Read the following article on the changing language and answer the questions that follow.
Email sends coded warning to English teachers

Children are inventing a new lexicon for electronic communication with a range of jargon and symbols that adults find hard to understand. Although educators and politicians were once concerned about sloppy pronunciation, it seems that ‘email English’ poses a greater threat to the language.

For example, the symbol : -( represents a sad face (if you turn your head and look at it sideways) and is widely used to signify sympathy, disappointment or bad news. The symbols have evolved to keep down the cost of mobile phone text messages and emailing, speed up the response time and inject emotion into concise missives.

Teachers say that the new shorthand style associated with emails is making their job of improving literacy skills even harder. Researchers from the McCann-Erikson advertising agency, who interviewed more than 100 children aged 5-11, concluded that traditional letter-writing will be of no more use later in life than the history lessons pupils learn in schools.

Robin Laufer, who led the research, said that symbols used in text messages represented new ways of expressing emotions. ‘You need intonation if you are going down to the shortest possible form of communication. So if you put a smiley face next to a sarcastic comment, it shows you are joking and not being nasty. We are witnessing a communications revolution which children have adapted to very quickly. Our language is changing in front of our eyes.’

More than half a billion text messages are sent by mobile phone every month. The growing trend coincides with concern over standards in formal writing. Just 54 per cent of 11-year olds achieved the expected level in writing in last summer’s national tests compared to 78 per cent in reading.

Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, said that we should now be far more concerned about the influence of email than any failings of teaching. ‘Dropping grammar and replacing sentences with abbreviations will damage the language,’ he said.

Ms Laufer added: Kids have always had some coded language of their own which separated them from grown-ups, but the internet and mobile phones have given them the ability to do this much more. Writing a longhand letter is going to have to be something that is taught at school and, while they will know how to do this, the question is, will they want to?”


1. What do adults find difficult to understand in the new lexicon?

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2. What worried people in education before the arrival of ‘email English’?

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3. What three reasons are given for the development of email symbols?

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4. According to teachers, what is making their job harder?

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5. Why is it suggested that, in the future, traditional letter-writing will no longer be of any use?

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6. Why are symbols so important in electronic communication?

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7. What does a smiley face symbol represent, according to the text?

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8. How many text messages are sent each year?

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9. What percentage of 11-year old children failed to reach the expected level in writing?

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10. According to Nigel de Gruchy, what is going to harm the English language?

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11. What does Ms Laufer say that the internet and mobile phones have given children?

…………………………………………………………………………………….[1 mark]