Wide context
Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)
/^t/Twenty or thirty years ago, writing letters, keeping diaries were common, people could use words to communicate various, vague emotions, they could use their minds to express thoughts in a concise form. Nowadays, with the use of electronic aids, telephones, videos, faxes, etc., there is no longer place for words, now the content is more important than the form and we are beginning to abandon the habits of thought. It is very frightening as it all starts very early, computer toys, digital watches, calculators, computers are present in the children's lives from the very beginning. Children instead of learning to think grow up convinced that these electronic aids are their right. They learn dead vocabulary that has nothing to do with Shakespeare or Milton. The impute of information they get is boring and mindless and the use of computer breed laziness and discontent. From the very childhood they learn that thinking and organising will be done for them and later this computer generation assumes that it is better to calculate, buy petrol, tell the time, pat the bills or shop with the aid of a computer. Children and young people glued to the computer screen will be more and more common phenomenon. Parents, unaware of a danger, are happy that their beloved kids are developing their minds while they in fact do nothing of that sort playing violent, sophisticated computer games. These children have simply no time for thinking and their behaviour is just the sign of the fact we are entering the computer age which is the age of dehumanisation. What is even more scaring is that people who express misgivings about the use of electronic aids by children are considered to be unimaginative, old-fashioned and out-of touch.