Text Speak and Slang in School/Uni/Exams?

[Ame]

I also have to say for one, that for a non-native English speaker, it's very hard to try to 'translate' the urban communities use of the English language. Sometimes, I seriously and honestly have no freaking clue what people are talking about. It is a slang of it's own, and it's also being brought forth onto the internet. I have no idea how to keep up with all of this! I.E. :

'comon blad, init?' ... WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN!? D: And it's not any better than 'srsy like omg wtf r u talking bout?' or 'iM $0 $3Xii iT HURTZ' .... O.O People, please. For the love of God, people around the world are trying to learn English and make a living. How can they obtain jobs, having to speak with people that talk like this, let alone in school, but out in the real world? D:

[sprogjcrisis]

Mother of all things that don't make sense, what does that mean!? Maybe:

Common mistake, isn't it?
Common baldy ain't it?
Common blob in it.
Come on Brad, in for it?
I'm going with "Common....something"

Moving on, my English teacher was talking about a job application that was sent in written in text slang. It just looks unprofessional and sloppy. My friend showed me this (I know it's a joke but it points out an issue relaated to the slang on the internet) which I find amusing because it is sadly true:



Words cannot describe the amount of times I wanted to bang my head on the table.

[yummyeyepatch]

Well, if you mean in actual school material requirements, then I would prefer formal. But I'm okay with school mates using slang or whatever they're comfortable with. Although, I do get bothered a lot by text speak or 'super' slang. >_> I try to hold the grammar nazi in me >: because I respect people's capabilities. English is also not my first language. But then there's a very big difference between speaking with what you're comfortable with and speaking with what you think is cool. :/

[ellipsis]

I agree that colloquialism should be kept out of School/Uni/Exams etc. because what if it is accepted? What then? That would mean that people would start to accept and fall back on this lazy way of expressing themselves. Especially in subjects like English Literature, when having to express the form/language/structure of the text it would fall short simply because it just looks and sounds completely unprofessional.

Also where would exam boards/schools etc draw the line? If they accept this way of writing essays and exam answers there will be a small difference between the material of what is accepted and what isn't, and it would bring a lot of confusion. For example; between "socialism + satire" and "S-ism + satire" (bad example I know). They would have to draw the line somewhere or otherwise written pieces would simply be impossible to understand. This would then lead to unnecessary amount of tweaks and changes to the way they mark and read these things when they could just simply keep it to formal language.