Techno Toleration

Now a days, I believe literacy expands far beyond the ability to read and write. Comprehending a message is more important than actually reading or writing one, and sometimes the messages may include visual clues without words. However, I feel it is very important to sufficiently display literacy through the means of traditional language. As an aspiring chemistry teacher, I know that suffixes, prefixes, root words, and LANGUAGE are very important tools in understanding chemistry. Chemistry is almost another language on Earth, and being a fluent speller with strong grammatical skills is vital in chemistry communication. I fear that excessive texting and relaxed sentence structure through digital media will hurt a child's growth in science. In order to demonstrate my point, I am going to write a formidable sentence from a lab report...

The solid compounds, trans-chalcone, benzoic acid, and naphthalene, were dissolved in dichloromethane prior to the mobile phase.

Though you may not have the chemistry knowledge to fully understand this sentence, a student with strong writing, reading, and spelling skills would understand this sentence better than one who had poor skills. Someone with pleasant writing skills would understand that trans- chalcone, benzoic acid, and naphthalene were three SOLID substances. The reader may also be able to understand that dichloromethane has the prefix di- (which means two). The strong skills of this student enabled him/her to immediately learn a basic fact about 4 different chemicals. Now that the reader has a better understanding of the chemicals, the next time the student encounters these chemicals their chemical knowledge will grow exponentially.

Basically, what I'm saying is this: The modern forms of communication are great and fun!!!! On the other hand, chemistry classrooms can only tolerate a slight amount of relaxations.STUDENTS WHO WANT TO SURVIVE CHEMISTRY CLASSES~!~ Work on the Three R's, Reading, Riting and Rithmetic! : P