December 14, 2006 -
Do video games contribute to a decreased vocabulary?That's one conclusion drawn by a professor at the U.K.'s Lancaster University. As reported by the BBC, Tony McEnery (left) studied blogs, questionnaires and speech patterns of British teens and found that they used half the words of the average 25 to 34-year-old. The teens he studied had an average vocabulary of 12,600 words as opposed to 21,400 in the older group. McEnery said:
While the school curriculum shows a strong focus on literacy, speech has been relatively neglected in the curriculum.
The prof blamed mp3 players and video games in part for what is known as "technology isolation syndrome:"
Employers are already complaining that first jobbers are lacking basic verbal communication and it seems things could be set to get worse.
Kids need to get talking and develop their vocabulary.
GP: Thanks to reader Paul Crowther for tipping us off to this story...
Comments
Re: Survey Says... Games Make You Stupid
The conclusion is..Games does not make teenagers stupid. When taken in an apropriate dosage it stimulates reflexes and concentration.
HOWEVER it is excessive gaming that causes "thinking" retardation especially if you are repeating the same gaming process again and again. Isolation from the crowd when you are too preoccupied with these gadgets does reduces the ability to communicate verbally - all you do is clicking the mouse learning how to squeak.
1) The prof blames "mp3 players and video games in PART" for something he considers to be contributing (in part :P) to the decreasing vocabularies of teens.
2) It makes perfect sense that teens would have a more limited vocabulary than adults.
3) This isn't an issue of technology making people stupid, it's an issue of the school curriculum not focusing on an important area during elementary and high school.
Technology doesn't take away your vocabulary. If anything, it makes you learn more wonderful words and phrases like "porn", "torrent", "piracy" and "the RIAA is suing your ass". :P
So which is it? Games or the schools not teaching it?
you forgot L33t, PWNAGE, and n00b
Of course teens don't use the same amount of words as a 25-34 year old, they're teens. They haven't matured fully, nor have they gone to college where you get to learn all sorts of fun new words.
What about slang? Did he even bother to take into account that most teens use slang that people older than them don't know.
I call poppycock, balderdash, stuff and nonsense, bollocks, bunkum, humbug...
*headdesk*
But to compare teens to 30 year-olds, and declare their vocabulary "inadequate" is deplorable at best.
Interestingly enough, a similar study looked at the prevalence of "l33t speak", and found that it had zero impact on students' ability to spell regular english words.
Perhaps they should look at children's cartoons. The ones dumbed down for US markets...
So all the egregious spelling errors on the Internet are totally unrelated?
Others have praised me for my adept use of the English language, but maybe I'm an exception. Maybe all the reading I did as a child developed my vocabulary and English skills early. Who knows?
Amazingly most of my vocabulary was developed because I am an avid reader. There are many factors contributing to the decline of vocabularies but most of it starts with dumbed down TV and stories for children, followed by crappy education systems.
But I don't think many parents would get the joke...
I'm not a professor of speech pathology, nor or statistics. But it seems logical that one would find a difference in vocabulary when comparing any two groups separated by more than twenty years. in order to lend credence to his clams, the good doctor McEnery aught to have compared young gamers, to young non-gamers.
This is simply the spin doctoring of an old man, who, very likely feels out-dated himself. And instead of catching up, he is trying to tear down the trends of today's youth by attacking MP3 players and video games. This report may as well be titled "Back in my day...", as it hold no more credibility than the rantings of an our of touch professor anyway.
Final thought: I wonder if Professor McEnery would be as trouble by the prevalence of digital media in today's youth culture if it was used to play classical music, or the games based on... whatever the fuck was considered wholesome in his day?
I resemble that remark.
Yet again, another study that ignores context. The gamers ~I~ know personally are utter nerds who roleplay and immerse themselves reading reams of script from RPGs or Tolkien. The gamers my "chav" sister knows play nothing but sport or "gangster" games and are exposed entirely to limited vocabulary domains. My sister and I can barely hold a conversation because her vocabulary is limited to "yeah but no but", and mine is stupidly big. I have a BRUMMY ACCENT, but she calls me POSH because I use "big words".
My point? Generalising for the lose. Teens are not all the same. Gamers are not all the same. Games are not all the same. And speech communities certainly form all on their own; check out any community, and each will have idiosyncracies and language features unique to that community.
Mobile phone companies and such are certainly quick enough to jump on the latest teen slang trend and encourage it as "cool", deviant language.
He may be right about the vocabulary but I don't think computer games are to blame.
Given, MMOs can make you stupid from the constant steams of poorly-typed, unintelligable sentences riddled with grammatical and spelling errors you sometimes run into (0mg, cn u halp me? how i mine 4 fish?), but I've been exposed to that stuff for going on six years now and I can still talk/type properly.
I find that such typers are like the high pitched shrill of steam eminating from a kettle, so I didn't read it as a typo. ;)
Besides, saying that teens have a lower vocabulary because of video games wouldn't be fair as the young adults play them too, making the video game factor an obsolete and inconclusive factor in vocabulary levels in this case. Afterall, didn't the ESA find from about 2003 or 2004 up until now that the average age of the video game player is about something like 29 to 31 years old, which is part of the group he says have a larger vocabulary.
So I can come up with only two predictions as to why he said it and tell me if I'm wrong:
1) Either it's some form of cleverly constructed propoganda of some odd kind to appeal to those in a state of future shock or culture shock over what the young kids are doing with their dangerous new slang and gadgets.
2) It's an uneducated guess as to why, if at all, kids have lower vocabularies than adults based on previously held conceptions that MP3 players and, even more so, video games are a domain of kids and teens, so that is apparently the automatic thing to blaim.
But what I don't understand is how you can blame MP3 players for a lower vocabulary. How in the minds of any educated person could that be possible? So listening to MP3s of Korn, Godsmack, POD, Creed, Linkin Park, etc. on an iPod causes the amount of words I know automatically to go down and kills a few of my brain cells? Horseshit is what I say!
I may not live in the UK (I'm in the US) and I may not be a teen (I'm 21) but I'm pretty sure that there isn't too much of a gap between the populations of different countries in terms of how games and other technology effect the populations of a certain age group as well as being of a certain age group doesn't prevent you from playing games.
Quote :
"He put this down to A LACK OF TRAINING and the OVERUSE of technologies such as computer games and MP3 players.
'This trend, known as technology isolation syndrome, could lead to problems in the classroom and then later in life.'"
I don't see anything shocking in that. This prof doesn't blame mp3 players and video games THEMSELVES, but the OVERUSE of such technologies. He may be wrong, but there is a huge nuance between blaming excessive use of technology (like McEnery) and blaming the technology and its users (like Bill O'Reilly).
Poor spelling, grammar, and even acronyms on the internet come from several factors:
Primarily, there's speed. In particular in the old days before VOIP, chatting in a game was difficult. You really didn't have time to go back and fix mistakes. Look at this and it's quite easy to see where "teh" and "pwn" came from. Acronyms are also very important.
This spreads. Some misspellings become "cool", like the ones I just listed. L33t speak also enters in like this.
Both of these factors then contribute to the idea that spelling and such isn't as important on the internet. I'd be willing to bet money that if you took most bloggers and had them write down their thoughts in a real-world paper journal, their writing skills would be better than what they post on their blogs.
Note: Beacon does not have a linguistics degree or anything like that. These conclusions are based on nothing more than his experiences online and his common sense.
I've noticed a slight delcine in how the English language is being used in America, but it's not in the gamer world. I find the hip-hop subculture or "urban youth" have much worse language skills than anyone else. I work in sales of music gear and trust me... these people are the bane of my existance.
SAT verbal score: 800 of 800.
Standing as living proof against some limey academic's cockamamy "findings": Priceless.
There are some words culture won't expose you to. For everything else, there's Final Fantasy.
Are video games and music to blame? No
Because schools and parents refuse to take a stand and teach their kids responsibility and moral values, there has been a rise in drug use, underage drinking, ciggerrete smoking and of course decline intelligent thinking among today's youth
Kids nowadays are either too wrapped up in social "activities" or too busy going out and creating ridiculous political conspiricy theories (Ex: Quick Change), because they don't think about what they are doing
They need to start realizing that they aren't any different then their parents, they aren't proggressing in terms of values or in terms of intelligence. They are going to follow the same path their parents did, and their kids will do the same thing in a never ending cycle because the majoirty of parents refuse to take a stand and lead their kids to the future
As the old saying goes..
"Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it."
I think when I was 15, I used half the words I use now.
Of course, when i was 15 I didn't know what intentional infliction of emotional distress meant... or combined causation... or badgerbadgerbadgerbadger.
The bottom, utterly obvious line - to expand your vocabulary you need to be exposed to new words. If I did nothing but listen to my iPod all day, I'd have a pretty slim vocab because I'm only ever exposed to a small set of words.
As it is, I could argue that a diet of plot-driven games (anything with a coherent story line) will expose you to new words, and that playing lots of different games could expand your vocabulary. I learned 'sagacious' from Resident Evil 4 (along with a smattering of rude Spanish phrases.) The key is diversity in one's media consumption - someone who only watches certain TV shows and plays online shooter with his/her friends won't be exposed to new words, so their vocabulary won't grow.
Though I do agree that vocabs develop over time and that him saying that adults have a larger vocabulary than teenagers. If you want more vocabulary, or more knowledge of anything in general, there's not really any substitute for 15 extra years of experience.
Just read a few of his posts...they mostly deal with games and related technology, and yet his linguistic skills could likely put this codger to shame.
Of course, i see many claims of superior vocabulary in the comments myself, and i'm afraid i must join my own to the mess. My vocabulary has never fallen short (at the age of 5 i surprised family at a dinner when i told my sister that it was "my perogative" to mix my peas into my mashed potatoes), and with simple words, i've broken hearts and turned sworn enemies to friends.
Communication skills go so much deeper than simple vocabulary, however. The man with the largest vocabulary could speak, and nobody would understand him or, quite honestly, care, if he is unable to form them into coherent ideas.
However, a man of lesser lexical knowledge can drive home a point using monosyllabic words, if those are all he knows, so long as he can convey a complete thought.
It's not necessary to utilize extravagant language for the purpose of communication.
Small words can get the point across just as well.
ANYTHING beyond that is pure supposition on the part of the professor.
Opinion is a wonderful thing, but when represented as fact by those who are held in high esteem, it becomes tiresome and frustrating
In 5th grade i got tested on my verbal skills. It was part of a program to figure out the best way to help me compensate for a learning disability. The Doctor who did the testing said I had a vocab of most college seniors. A little shy of the 21,00 mark. I didn't use them but if they came up in a conversation a could understand them. I stopped using them because many ADULTS had trouble understanding what I said.
This study is wrong. He analyzed blog posts. Many of which are informal, unplanned and meant to be easily understood. Just because someone knows something doesn't mean they use that knowledge.
I can make explosives, mortars, and rockets. I know the basic principles of how to wire up a building so it can be blown up with as little explosive as possible(Not that i can get my hands on the right stuff). I can make primitive shaped charges, land mines, and small gliders. I can use cad programs and CNC milling machines. I can do basic plumbing (copper and pvc). I can do trig and am learning to do calculus. Just because I know this stuff doesn't mean I use it.
I lack of usage does not imply a lack of knowledge.
What wonderfully florid prose, to bad no one has time to decipher what could have been stated in a much simpler way.
Disclaimer: My grammar is shitty.
I hate to say this but I was speaking from the perspective of someone who has overused technology. When I was a young teen, I used to go on gaming marathons of 4 to 6 hours each school day if I was able to get the time and even so high as 12 to 14 hours or more during weekends and the summertime. I still occassionally do a long run of gaming every now and then. I would technically call that overuse.
Despite that, I was still learning things like timing, coordination, logic, pacing myself, vocabulary and many things that to tell you the truth school wasn't able to fully teach me on it's own. In fact I learned quite a bit of what I know from school, but even more from the games I played. In highschool I was on the honor roll across at least seven different school quarters and the high honor roll across at least three quarters, and my teachers were sometimes vastly impressed at the numerous skills and abilities I have.
But the point of what I am saying is that even if you overuse technology, that doesn't automatically mean that your verbal skills go down and you become unable to communicate formally or properly on a job or to someone else.
So for this professor to assume that someone who overuses technology can lack verbal skills would only be partially right, and that would only be because of certain people amongst a larger population who overuse it and the whole time either don't have their focus set in the right place or perhaps don't want to actually think and enrich their knowledge, in whatever aspect it may be, because it's either too hard or they think it's uncool and nerdy to do so. It could also be due to specific brain chemistry and environmental factors such as public education, parental guidance, and peer influence or lack thereof.
Basically I think this professor has a bullcrap idea. It's not so much what you do, even if it is excessive, it's how well you are able to control that overuse (that includes the amoung of time), how well you absorb things during that time, and especially how you utilize it. That is what I think is the problem, not the overuse or addiction itself as it seems that article in question indicates. He did say it "could" lead to problems in the classroom and later in life and not that it definitively would ruin you, but being as the article focuses on lack of good verbal communication and partially blames the overuse of technology as a factor I don't think it was balanced enough for my tastes.
As for the lack of training perhaps being a big factor in how well someone performs on the job, I fully well agree.
@Phrogg
Heh. I know what you mean. My mother was amazed when I used the word "irritable" at age four or five.
If you want to blame something for the obvious decline in the nation's linguistic abilities, blame mobiles. In my entirely personal and largely unfounded opinion txt speak is responsible for the abuse of language you see from the youth of today. Not so long ago a school board issued a request that history exams - *exams*, mind - should not be marked down even if the student uses contractions like "ur."
Mull on that one for a while, then get back to me about the causes of this problem.
Same case, here. I bought a Nintendo when I was 10, and I was truly addicted to video games for a while. I've overcome that now, although I'm still a gamer. My vocabulary, grammar, etc. are all fine, though. Then again, I learned to read at 3. I'm probably not the best base, since I'm trying to become a published writer, plus I've got a few mild disabilities going on in my brain.
Also does anyone find it unusual that he analysed blogs and came to a conclusion about vocal speech?
Klar Ist Es offensichtlich, dass dieser Artikel voll von Scheiße ist.
:-P