Respuestas
Abstract: One of the first activities created by the human being, is communication. Hand movings, later screams and sounds, become along the centuries in the articulated language. Like a dynamic entity, language has evolved along human history. But this evolution is not linear, many languages stop to use; this are death languages. But taking them as start point, new languages developed, taking that ancient languages as basement. Along the time, many people has watch for the adequate use of the language, especially in written media. But across de 20th Century, with the development of the mass media, all languages, not only English or Spanish, has a neglect use and abuse. Is a paradox, but in the Information Era now we live, most of the time language is poorly used. And this overcome media, to affect all places: schools, government, business and companies. From our point of view, a language improvement is necessary to be more efficient in our work, our business, in our whole life.
Introduction. The language is something we take for granted. We learn the “phonetic map” of our mother tongue between the six and the 11 months of birth. That means that in this period we learn to hear and recognize the sounds of any language. Even, A baby exposed to different languages in this period, may learn to recognize (and after to talk) this languages.
Past some time, around 18-20 months old, a baby has a vocabulary of about 150-300 words. But the right pronunciation and context is a longer process that come around 6 or 7 years old. In this period a child can use hundreds of words and use a correct syntaxes.
During this period of childhood, every person acquire his “mental map of language”. This means in this period configure their basic language form. Even, this change during the social and scholar life.
When this person ends his formative period and comes to the social and working activity, the theory is that this man or girl counts with enough knowledge and communication capabilities to face the world. This sounds great, but isn’t completely true.
Other formation sources. During this period, are a parallel info source: electronic mass media. Radio, and principally TV and since some years, Internet, are one source of knowledge that acts during more time in a person’s life that school formation.
It’s not a secret that in the last 30 years, TV programs pass from educative contents to explode mainly violence and sex. Currently we hear that at twelve years, a child has seen ten thousand murders and know about sex more than his father. And it happened about internet too. Only in Youtube, the most seen content is music videos, followed by comedy.
This other formation sources has a “surprise” problem: the bad language use. Not only we talk about rudeness or vulgarity; we mean the bad use of language: wrong use of words, poor syntaxes, slang between others, distort the right use of language, and the worst of this, is that the used of this media don’t note it. It becomes the normality.
This problem go further. This poor language, this poor communication, applied in any organization (school, government, business or companies) obstruct the development of the need activities.
Why? Because, by one hand, the person ways of communication are distort; then, a message is not as effective as it may be.
By other hand, laziness to read, code and decode written information (many prefer to search a video tutorial).
It hits in the organization productivity. Is like a dysfunctional phone: Sometimes we can rebuild a bad message, but sometimes we can’t understand the context.
The final ingredient. And why the “other” formation overcome school? This is due two factors. Firstly the easily of acquisition. The school formation needs to enforce to understand information, code and decode to assimilate knowledge. Comparatively, audiovisual info, is assimilated so easily, because is a live sample how something is done, the “how to”. As Plato said, “Long and tedious is the knowledge through theories, short and effective by examples”.
The second is continuity. If we can ask people, we may see that school knowledge is seen as obligation, something unhelpful and empty. Unfortunately, most teachers drown child’s curiosity, making then see study and knowledge acquirement as a burden, and not as a pleasure or a gain. Conversely, TV and now internet, are ever there: easy to see, without great effort and easy to assimilate. They are there practically until person’s dead.
Is absolutely clear that a better and assertive communication is essential in any organization, but this is obstructed by the bad use of language in the media. Banish the use of media or change the way they use language is utopic and unreal solution. Certainly may be better improve language, but in this moment that’s not solution.
Beginning from school formation, show the importance of a good language use, and clear dudes or show mistakes from media. And over this, teach children that they can and may learn by themselves, to don’t feel afraid by the knowledge.
In the case of workers and professionals, teach the importance of a correct use of language and how to develop a clear and assertive speech or written messages.
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