What influence does chatting (in chatrooms) have on the English language?

[Hadeel]

Good Morning Everybody,

Here, I like to talk about the influence of Chatting on our English Language. Most of us have frequently used chatting for entertainment or for instant contact with friends, relatives to talk about urgent things. As we know, in chatting we use abbreviations, we don't write the word or the phrase completely, and we also use short sentences with no consideration to the structure or the grammar or even the spelling, we just want to express our ideas to the opposite in the shortest time which may make us write with many mistakes. I don't mean that chatting does not have good influence on our language, of course by chatting we learn more vocabularies, idioms in addition it increases our general knowledg especially when we talk with foriegners as well as the number of our friends.

I like to hear from you about your personal experience with Chatrooms, does it improve your language? Or do you think writing messages in regular way has better effect.

[Torsten]

Dear Hadeel,

As you correctly stated chatting is much more informal than most other forms of written communication. The verb «to chat» means to talk in a very casual way. You are also right in saying that we use online chatting when we want to express our ideas as fast as possible allowing other people to follow and participate in our conversation. Chatting means you have to react to written language instantly and that's why you have to makes concessions regarding your grammar, spelling, syntax etc., so you put fluency over accuracy. Especially when you learn English as a second language you should try to write as correctly as possible because otherwise you will get used to your mistakes. Imagine you communicate for a long period of time in chatrooms where people don't care about the correctness of their language — after a while you won't be able to distingush between right and wrong. You will start to speak «chat language» and you want to talk to a business professional they will immediately identify you as a «chatty person».
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[Salvo]

Hi all

I've always thought that chatrooms can be helpful for a beginnner, but while reading your messages I realized that you are both totally right!I think I'm going to avoid chatrooms from now on.

Regards
Salvo

[Torsten]

Hi Salvo,

Avoiding chatrooms might be very drastic method. It's important that you are able to tell the difference between the various language styles. As you know there various levels of communication and each one has its own rules and features. For example, if you want to apply for an executive postion at an internationally operating corporation you have to use a certain set of phrases and word combinations that are different from the language dominating chatrooms.
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[Bent_Ilq8]

I think that you are right hadeel , but I think that if we try to write in chattingrooms correctly we will improve our language .
also I think that if we try to write in forums , we will be better in inglish

[Aranthaa]

You can still pick up some good English here. From my experience chatting does not necessarily involve bad or too colloquial English. You can look for new buddies, but be choosy about them and just immediately drop the ones with signs of above informal language: almost all messengers have ‘ignore’ list. I'm speaking about messaging in instant messengers like odigo, icq, yahoo, msn, etc. It can be a little bit slower than speaking to many users at once in a chat-room, that's why you still have time to compose a full sentence.
My experience: I talked with a very well-read Englishman for several months, in addition to fantastically interesting and often heated discussions about politics, literature, philosophy, music, hobbies etc. he proved a chance not to be missed to improve my grammar and increase the vocabulary. He was a computer programmer, not a man of letters or a teacher, but he preferred to use impeccable English phrases and expressions.
I mean you can look for such buddies, check profiles, and also decide on the topics you'd like to discuss from the very beginning. And don't be shy to ignore new unwanted buddies, if you do it after a couple of phrases no one will get hurt or even pay much attention.
What else you can do is try to look for older users, they tend to use more formal language without abbreviations and they have a lot to write about, some of them are great fun as well.

[Emad]

Hi all :

I have to use academic English , which helps me to pass the Exam , that i am looking forward to score highly through.

However my position ,i have just written about above , i think English is more a metod of communication , we looking forward to improve our methods of commincation with english speakers , we are not looking to be language spealised , who are treachers of language.

So , language is a method of communication between human beings , why not language be easy method , not complex .

So chating could be a good way to improve English , however it is highly affected by American commincation methods of abbreviations .

cheers
emad

[Torsten]

Dear Emad,

So you are trying to get a work permit as a physiotherapist in New Zealand. Are you going to be employed or do you want to set up your own office? What is the job situation for physiotherapists in Egypt?
As for your English — I'm sure that with a some more training you will score above 7.5 in the IELTS exam, there a plenty of prep materials available - you can practise for 30 minutes each day. Also, Alan's tests will increase your confidence as well. How many of them have you taken yet?
You are right — English should be the means rather the purpose but then again language is the single most important tool we possess when it comes to achieving our goals. You might be an expert in a special field and still your success largely depends on your ability to communicate with other people. That's why we can share our ideas here in the forum, this will increase our word power.
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[Emad]

Hi Tor:

I am practising daily over than 3 hours of writing ,reading ,listening and little speaking .

I do want to immigrate to NZ to live there , so i have to gain work permit ,after i am registered as physiotherapist there.Opening office there , i do not know regarding this ,i think u mean having a private practice/clinic .No , i do not know any more , i think my begining will be as employed , and trying to study more post .

Physiotherapist work in Egypt is not of benefit , i can not live any more here , culture is extremely restrictive ,making me like sovacting.then there is another great cause which is Ethics , this cause is very important for me , i do not like to work unethically , this is may be all over the world , and i think it is very common in USA , where physiotherapists can pay commissions to doctors to referr cases , tyhis is normal there is USA , but here all doctors want this ,but they ashamed to ask ,thy are afraid from speaking about /narrate about each other , may be a rural area where i live , but i see all what i can not bear , i can not go aby more with here , and patients do not visit physiotherapists directly , they do not know anything about physio, they think only in taking drugs more more , anf being dependant , this idea of dependancy also found in physio ,as some physios think the consumer might be dependant on them ,to find their financial source , and there is no way to review ,discipline.

Regarding English , i do not know about Alen,s tests
Tor , i believe in one thing important , to approach a problem/test ,you have to know its strategy /method /way to address , you may be very good in English ,or even you may be a first English speaker /native and you can not score ghood in certain exam , simply because you do not know the way to go .
So , about me and ielts ,yes it is important to practise English ,but the more important to know how to approach ielts espicially.

cheers

emad

[Torsten]

Hi Emad,

Many thanks for sharing your work experiences with us. As for Alan's tests, if you take a look at our site you will see that there is a very large collection of interactive tests that aim at preparing you for English language exams. That's why our site called english-test.net
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[Clark]

Salaam Hadeel,
In my opinion it is worth spending time in various native English chatrooms if you wish to pick up some native words and sentences used in young people's community. For instance, when I first moved to London, I literally spent hours in chatrooms to study the basic English because from there you could chat to real English speakers without embarrasement of not being able to understand certain words.

Clark

[Torsten]

Hi Clark,

To be honest when Haadel mentioned chatrooms I wasn't even thinking of the fact that in most of places you will find people whose mother tongue is English of course. So, you are certainly right — you can pick up a lot of idiomatic phrases you wouldn't find in a text book. As long as you can distinguish between different language styles any form of communication will increase your level of English. If devote a certain amount of time to practising all four disciplines — reading, listening, writing and speaking, you will learn English in a very efficient way.
Do you have any additional suggestions on how to learn English?
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[Clark]

Memorising various genuine English articles would push up the standard of your written level exponentially but that requires a lot of patience and effort.

[Kumi]

Hi there,

This is a very interesting topic for English learners.

Chatting on the Internet is very convenient and lots of fun, but I think it definitely has some disadvantages. On the contrary, it has some advantages, too.

A main problem with chatrooms is the different special style of English. As you know we use small letter i for pronoun I, u for you, thx for thanks and so on.
When we enjoy chatting in a chatroom, the speed is important. So we have a tendency to abbreviate English words as many as possible. It's useful to a certain extent, but at the same time it's a confusion for the people who are not get used to the style. Without noticing, we users absorb those abbreviated English words and expressions - and it affects to our general English basis, I think.

I do believe there are some pros with chatrooms. It's a modern style of English, and we can learn a lot of idiomatic phrases there. I often come across new words and expressions, and natural phrases too. As for me, using English at the forum(like here) is better than using it in a chatroom. Because I need to learn English correctly, to build up my English basis. (And I don't have to rush at the forums!! )

I think.....on any matters there are advantages and disadvantages, so I think it's important to us that we know how to weigh up pros and cons in each situation.

What do you think?

Kumi

[Clark]