Message Sent

Nakadawat sab kaw? There is this message going viral on Messenger with an icon of an envelope with the teaser “I am send a surprise message. Open this.” The ones sending these are close friends and even prominent personalities in different departments and even the academe.

If it is a virus or a commercial gimmick of an online company, one can really think of the genius behind the “linking” and “spreading” it. The maker of the message could really make this type of thing to happen. The only thing s/he or they lack is the simple use of grammar. I AM SEND A SURPRISE MESSAGE can ring a thousand bells for a receiver who is keen in the use of English language. One could wonder if this is really relevant when in fact the words sent are grammatically wrong.

Grammar is important because it provides information that helps the reader's comprehension. It is the structure that conveys precise meaning from the writer to the audience.

According to linguapress.com, with written language, grammar is essential; written communication is deferred or indirect communication, and is unidirectional, so there is no possibility for the receiver to demand verification - at least not under normal circumstances. Written communication and any other form of indirect communication thus depend on correct use of grammar or syntax, as well as of vocabulary and spelling, in order to ensure that messages are immediately comprehensible to the reader, and not meaningless or ambiguous.

So, by just reading the text, the mind begins to function or question the proper use of the words. Like, why is this message made with grammatical errors? Is this a forwarded one or something like that of a virus? These questions are actually part of the COMPREHENSION process. A keen reader could do such questions fast before deciding for the next action.

According to Timothy Shanahan, who is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he was Founding Director of the Center for Literacy and chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, “there is a lot of evidence showing the importance of grammar in reading comprehension. Studies over the years have shown a clear relationship between syntactic or grammatical sophistication and reading comprehension; that is, as students learn to employ more complex sentences in their oral and written language, their ability to make sense of what they read increases, too.”

But with the influx of social media sites where everybody can do “shoutout”, it seems that the basic use of grammar became neglected. It is as if people are telling us that this is JUST a minute detail. There is nothing to worry since it’s just a minor glitch. Everybody commits mistakes, no one is perfect and the usual blabber of justifications. For them, as long as the message is sent, it is now the role of the receiver/reader to decode it.

Decoding texts is much more than simply knowing the meaning of words (or being able to find out the meaning) and knowing about the genre and purpose. Aspects such as grammar and punctuation also play an important role in the meaning of a text. Ttexts are often used in teaching as a means of introducing a particular grammar point or some vocabulary. However, this doesn’t mean that grammar should be, or can be, ignored. Instead, grammar should be looked at in terms of how it affects the meaning of the text and not as a goal in itself (Tennant, 2019).

We simply opened the message because we trusted the sender. Also, we probably thought that this is a New Year greeting. But one these can be alarming: Did we think about it? Did we see the mistake? Or, we are already part of the generation where grammar, vocabulary and comprehension are NOT important.

Yes, we need to be vigilant. Those who work in the academic world must be concerned about this since our learners are already manifesting the decline of these basic things they must learn. We can hear others saying that this is only a minor skill to master but we need to understand that COMMUNICATION and COMPREHENSION are still important skills in the 21^st century.

One teacher was overheard saying “Di dakan siguro pasobrahan pagbright!” and this writer retorted: Ma’am, we are in a business where intellect is the prime product! Her face went blank and I wondered if comprehension took place.