Simple English

Note: this post was originally written to be turned in as a journal response for one of my classes. It may not be written in "simple english" :-)

I recently came across a “Simple English” link in Wikipedia listed as a seprate language. I assumed it meant Basic English, a language created by linguist Charles Kay Ogden, which like Ido and Esperanto, promised to unify the world in one common language. Well, Wikipedia’s Simple English is not a constructed language, it’s just simpler English. The idea behind this, is to make articles more accesible to ELL’s (English Language Learners) and to children. Sounds fair enough, right? Well, it isn’t. I find that by reading the Simple English version of an article, the reader gets an over-generalized version of it. Being an ELL does not equate having no prior knowledge or ability to learn new terms or make connections. As a former ESL student, I owe my English proficiency to the challenging text I was exposed to during the first few years. Having literature above my proficiency level pushed me to investigate more, look words up, make connections and ask more proficient readers for clarification. By “translating” articles into Simple English, Wikipedia is only perpetuating ignorance and limited knowledge.

Wikipedia also claims that another target audience for this project is children. Well, as a teacher, I don’t recommend Wikipedia as a tool for research for my students because of it’s ever-changing nature. I often do preliminary research in it as a way to link to the primary sources, of course always verifying their validity. If I give assignments that require my students to do internet research, I provide them with child-friendly links with fully published articles such as FirstGov for Kids or the ThinkQuest Library. NOT wikipedia.