Queens English Gets New Literacy Defender
Keen2learn has voiced previous opinion on the essential educational value of learning the Queen’s English. An amalgam of many languages incorporated over the centuries it’s amazingly resilience is under threat from its growing global usage. A new society is being formed to protect the structure of English literacy.
The international use of English makes it the world’s most widely spoken language geographically, even if the combination of the many Chinese dialects, and Chinese whispers are used by more people! The growth in international trade and the use of the internet, films and DVD’s has increased the application of English. A measure is the adoption by international marine and aviation bodies to use English as the defacto spoken word for aircraft communication between pilots and air traffic control. But can English literacy survive the onslaught of global usage without more formal control?
The Queen’s English Society is forming an “Academy of English” to lay down the ground rules. Introducing similar functions to those of existing language societies, L’Academie Francaise in France and Real Academia Espanola in Spain, the English academy will uphold the rules of conflict. One of the biggest challenges will be to influence the youthful use of English in school classrooms, educational video games, e-mail and text messaging. These have introduced abbreviations that could disrupt the language entirely. A recent survey by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson completed by Miriam Gross revealed the staggering estimate that one million people living in London cannot read. Although a proportion used English as a second language a growing factor is the use of “street” English slang especially by children who live in poorer areas.
The survey found that slang, not allowed in the classroom in other European states, was accepted in many of the primary UK schools reviewed. Teachers didn’t feel it is their role to interfere with self expression. This creates a miss match with the learning process and the focus of literacy in the national curriculum. It also comes as a shock to these children when entering secondary schools that slang is not acceptable. Whether the English Society can help to defeat “street” is questionable but they could certainly lay the ground rules and increase the awareness of the ideal to affected teachers.
It is not just school children that impact on English. Radio, telegrams and telex (remember them? ) carved a niche in English as we know it. As technology and communications move on abbreviations and colloquialisms, now out of context, disappeared, the wound to the English language healed. The greater danger to English lies in the failure to understand the fundamentals of its structure. If children at school are not taught the basics of literacy viz. grammar, vocabulary and spelling, the resultant abuse of the language lies in their lack of comprehension. This vicious circle of poor sentence structure hampers the recovery from tech speak or txt spk – “you know what I mean.” The use of mobile phones and their expanding range of applications, apologies, “apps” could excite the situation as children now dictate to their mobile phone and watch it automatically convert to text. Spell-check and grammar suggestions on-line defer some of the basic need to understand the nuances of the language. The English Society has their work cut out, but frankly the role they have to play is increasing and we can hope they will be successful in restoring the Queens English in the face of a global onslaught.
