Letter to the editor

This post responds to the "Twtr? It's majorly bad" article

Dear Editor,

I would like to respond to an interesting article posted on the 24 March 2014. First of all, I completely understand what your ideas are based upon, however, a few given arguments seemed very biased and inconsiderate of the positives “text speak” might offer. For one, everyone I write with regularly over social media or infrequently over email, I communicate and write casually, yet the person I communicate with and myself have barely ever used “text speak” like described in the article. The few times we have used it was to mock or essentially “make fun” of people who use it regularly. Casual in this context also means I write like I speak. I don’t use very sophisticated or any complicated language with my friends. I for myself will say “Innit”, but I would not ever think of using it in my academic writing. 

Along with this, I personally believe it’s not the actual texting which leads to problems in grammar and spelling. I believe it is the amount of time a student, especially a young developing student, is exposed to such language is a key factor which influences the way students write out- and inside of school. This leads back to the parents’ responsibility of specific allowance times for internet devices. If parents cut back the time their children are allowed to be on social media, the exposure to such “text speak” is reduced, hence reducing the adapting of “abbreviations and colloquialisms”. 

The teacher also makes a wild assumption that the next generations or the generations to come will not be able to have “correct use of grammar and spelling”. There is no statistical evidence behind this statement. After talking with a few English teachers I have had throughout the years, they all tend to disagree with that statement. Most of them said that “text speak” is a very momentary and brief period of English, which will most likely be forgotten or “eradicated” over the next few decades. 

Now I question you fellow readers, do you, or do you not agree with this head teacher and why? How often do you use “text speak” and does it influence your life as much as the article discusses?

Fictional Magazine Interview

For this task I have chosen to write a fictional interview with twenty-six year old Taylor Swift. She is an ever-growing pop star with one of - if not the - biggest fanbase of all time (245 000 000 followers across all social media).

*Disclaimer*

I am not stating I am a fan of her or her music, but I personally think her lyrics and the way she describes things are powerful and have a lot of meaning to them. Reading through the lyrics of her songs, I see how people relate to them and why she has been able to accomplish what she has … accomplished…?

Moving on, here is the fictional interview with Taylor Swift after her 4th studio album release, Red:

I:  Good morning Taylor it’s lovely to see you, welcome to our interview.

T: Hey thank you for inviting me, it’s great to be back.

I:  It’s feels like forever since you’ve been here.

T: Yes it really has been. 2 years, am I right?

I:  I feel like that’s accurate. Since you last album “Speak Now”.

T: Yes that was it.

I:  You are now here for your new album “Red” which has sold whopping 420 000 copies in it’s First. Week. Incredible

T: Thank you so much!

I:  New album, new songs. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the album?

T: Of course of course! The new songs are about the past 2 years of my life since the last album. They have been very important years to me, a lot has been happening, I have been going through a lot and I have learnt some valuable lessons.

I:  How has writing music become such an important part of your life?

T: Ohh I don’t think I could live without music anymore. It has become such an important part of my life ever since I was a little girl. I was inspired by my grandma who was an opera singer. To start out with, writing songs and poems was a way I could express my feelings. Now I can use it as a tool to communicate with all my fans and people who listen to my music.

I:  I can only compliment your artistic skills. How have you and your music changed since the last album? What is different about the two?

T: Personally, I feel like “Speak Now” was a way for me to say things which have been on my mind for a very long time, which I was either too shy or did not have the power to convince myself to let go of these things. So “Speak Now” has taught me to be a bit more daring in a way. So now with “Red” I have grown up a little, matured a little, and changed my perspective on things as well as the reasons and thoughts behind the new songs.

I:  When do you find yourself sitting down and writing down lyrics for the songs? And do you write the songs one by one?

T: I will find time anywhere to write down lyrics. They just pop into my head at given points. For example, I could be doing the laundry, it could be during a movie, or even during an interview. Now to answer your second question, whenever a line or a lyric is thought of, I use the closest thing to write that down. I could record a voice memo, sing it and record it, or simply write it down. Because of the way I take down all the lyrics, I usually write songs all over the place.

I:  All over the place? How do you keep it all organised?

T: Ohh I have my ways. I usually keep them in little stacks or folders/binders.

I:  When you piece the song together, do you have any strategies?

T: The first and most important to me is: how can I piece this together to portray or convey my exact emotions. How can I make a fitting melody to this? Then I think about my fans. How can I help them with my music. How can this song support what they’re going through? And last but not least I think about the performance. If I were to perform this, how would it look like with all the lighting and dancers? I think that’s it yeah.

I:  Well thank you very very much for this lovely interview. It has given me a great hindsight as to what you do.

T: No thank you! It’s always a pleasure to come here

I:  I definitely hope to see you for your next album!

An episode of my life

When we were given this task in English class the other day, it did not take very long for me to think of a very specific time period of my life which more or less formed a lot of my identity and how I react to specific things.

Straight off the bat, I am the exact opposite of an extrovert. I’m an introvert. This is clearly visible in classes which are not my strong points or in large groups of people. I feel more or less comfortable talking to a group of people not larger than 4. Any group of people larger than 4 I’ll usually stay quiet.

Now to get back to the episode of my life. I had just moved to Uganda and entering third grade. I had a tiny problem though. I could not speak proper English. It was very broken and my vocabulary was very very limited since I had lived the prior 4 years in Germany not speaking any English.

I roughly remember what happened for the first few weeks. Due to the fact that no one was really able to communicate with me, I felt fairly alone and always did things on my own. Every break and lunch I went to the library and just “read” English books. During these few weeks, I took extra lessons with my teacher, “read” a bunch of books and just did stuff by myself. But I am not going to lie, I felt happy doing this because I was learning and was always surrounded by a quiet area.

Some time into these weeks, the teacher asked a few students to do stuff with me. I was young and did not know how to react, so when one of the students asked what I wanted to do, I told them I just go into the library to read. So smooth. 

I remember at one very specific moment, I met a guy from the Netherlands. I do not know why or how, but he suddenly just came to me and we became good friends. He told me that he went through similar experiences, managed to get over it and wanted me to have a good time in the school. We even managed to communicate in a Dutch-German-English cross.

This time stands out to me as an important life lesson I had learnt. You don’t need to speak a language perfectly, neither do you need a lot of friends. As long as you have a good friend who understands you and is able to communicate with you, you’ll be in safe hands.