I can't believe I am blogging.

As I start with this assignment for class, let me say that I very seldom read blogs, and I never thought that I would myself be blogging. As I was thinking about this it occurred to me that this is part of the future of communication. Already the use of electronic communication has changed the way many people communicate. For many people this leads to a debate about the effect this will have on written language. Texting has created a new form of writing, and has caused concern about the future of written language. For some this is gr8, and if this is u then this last sentence doesn't upset you in any way. How ever if you are some one like my mother-in-law, this goes against everything that you believe about English.

She was a very dear lady, but as a child she developed a prescriptive view of language. Her teacher taught her that there was one correct way to write and to pronounce words, and for the rest of her life she held firm to this view.

That was my mother-in-law, but what about me, what is my view. As a teacher I find myself torn between helping my students be able to function and communicate on an educated level. When a student is writing a paper, or creating an article for newspaper, their use of English needs to follow standards of language. But when I am teaching beginning language I feel that the ability to be understood is more important that following all the standards for the language. As the language is being learned being understood is more important than total grammatical correctness.