Texting Affecting Literacy, Research Paper Example

Introduction

It is a world-wide trend for teens to constantly use their mobile devices, especially the cellular phone. Text messaging has become the most popular way for teens to communicate. The term textism has be coined to define a nonstandard form of English that students use when texting each other. This fact has created dismay among educators. Many educators are concerned that because children are using textisms so much, they are hindering their communication and writing skills. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine if educators have grounds to worry about this trend. However, some studies show that texting indeed hinders student’s ability write and speak correctly; yet others prove that texting does not have negative effects on a teen’s literacy ability.

Article I

Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children’s literacy attainment was written by Beverly Plester, Clare Wood, and Victoria Bell. This article examines two studies that investigated the relationship between children’s texting behavior, their knowledge of texting language, and their ability in written language in the school setting.  One study was conducted on 11-12 year old children. The children provided information about the way they texted. During the study, the children were asked to translate a text message into standard written sentences following grammatical rules. They were then asked to translate a grammatically correct sentence into a text message. They found that children who used their mobile devices to send three or more text messages a day had lower grades on standardized testing than children who did not send text messages. Nonetheless, the students who could write text messages using more abbreviations score better in verbal reasoning than other students.  The other study was conducted on students aged 7-10. They found that the ownership of a mobile device for that age group has almost doubled in three years.  About 25 percent of students in this age group owned a mobile device. They found that 82 percent of students aged 8-11owned a mobile device and 93 percent of students aged 12-15 owned cell phones. For both groups, texting was more popular than talking. Their overall findings infer that there are not direct correlations between texting and poor writing skills.

Article II

The Effects of Txt Messaging and Instant Messaging on Literacy was written by Lieke Verheijen. This article is a review of several empirical studies that were conducted in the last decade on the effects of text messaging and instant messaging on literacy achievement. One of the studies that were examined is the one discussed in article I, which showed that there are some positive correlations between texting and literacy, as well as some negative effects.  They also discussed another study that was conducted by Salome Geertsema, Charene Hyman, and Chantelle van Deventer which investigated educators’ perspectives of the impact of texting on youth’s writing abilities. The research was conducted in 22 South African secondary school teachers who taught English. The results convey that the majority of the educators believed that texting negatively affected their students writing abilities. Many of the educators reported that students who text a great deal tend to not adhere to standard grammar rules when spelling and punctuating sentences in class.  Yet, another study conducted by Sarah De Jonge and Nenagh Kemp on Fifty-two Australian high school students and fifty-three Australian university students. The results for both groups were that texting negatively affected the student’s writing abilities.  As a result of the findings, Verheijen concluded that the studies that have been published in the last several years convey a pattern of mixed results. According to him, it is nearly impossible to measure the results accurately because literacy is not a straightforward task. It concluded that several factors may play a role in the results like: age group of the student, prior literacy skills, nationality, cultural background, and even gender.

Article III

Can’t We All Get Along? Content, Technology, and the Battle for Literacy by Chris Underation defines literacy as the ability to read and write, and use this ability to collect general knowledge. While he says that understanding is the mental processing and synthesizing of the information. This article does not focus on just the use of texting or instant messaging, but the use of technology period. He believes there is a way to successfully fuse the two together and get a desired outcome. He discusses that even in the 1980s there was a concern with decreases in reading and literacy. Of course, the 80s were way before the digital age. He recalled that between 1963-1980, thirteen percent of all 17 year olds in the United States were functionally illiterate. He concluded that the traditional literacy program has been in crisis for some time. So, it is passed the time to try something different.  He concluded that that traditional literacy is not worse and technological literacy methods are not better, they are just different. He supports using digital means as a way of educating youths because it allows widespread of knowledge and real-time feedback.

Article IV

A Relationship between Text Message Volume and Formal Writing Performance on the SAT by Brian Wardyga wants to determine if there is a relationship between students’ volume of text messaging and formal writing abilities. He was also determining if gender plays a role in performance. The study was conducted on college freshman who had taken the SAT the previous year. Wardyga found that 14 percent of students send between 100-200 messages a day or between 3000-6000 text messages per month.  Also another 14 percent of teens send more than 6000 messages per month. Consequently, about 75 percent of teens have an unlimited text messaging plan on their mobile device. He found that teens have identified three main reasons why they prefer to text over talking face to face or on the phone: discrete, privacy around parents, more comfortable with texting than talking, and just a time passer. The mean score for the SAT was 200-800 points. Of the participants, the mean score was 489.36. Of this study, 62 percent of female students scored poorly or below average when compared to their peers. The study concluded that there was a negative relationship between female students’ text messaging and SAT writing scores.

Synthesis

All four articles brought out some important information that was supported by evidence. Technology is all us and in most cases it makes life much easier for us. It would be unwise to think that teachers would be able to teach literacy the way they did forty years ago. In the research, I found that many factors affect a child’s literacy ability. In article IV, it was found that gender and culture had a great impact on how texting affected literacy ability. I believe that the evidence is inconclusive to support or refute if texting can be blamed for negatively affecting a youths literacy abilities. I do believe that if a child has weak writing and literacy skills prior to send up to or more that 6,000 texts a month, his/her abilities will suffer. However, if a child has a concrete knowledge of grammar rules and is on grade level with literacy skills, he or she will be able to successfully turn of textism when producing an assignment for class. Many educators agree that they are seeing negative effects of texting in students’ literacy abilities. Often, educators are creatures of habit. When something works for them they want to do it the same exact way each time, especially older educators who may be unfamiliar with the devices. I tend to agree with article III. I believe that there is some way that technology can be used to enhance students learning and literacy. Many students say that school is boring to them. If teachers could figure out a way to implement the use of devices to enhance learning they would get great participation because students are already enticed to use their devices.

References

Plester, B., Wood, C. & Bell, V. (2008). Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children’s literacy attainment. Literacy, 42(3).

Verheijen, L. (2013). The effects of text messaging and instant messaging on literacy. English Studies, 94(5) 582-602.

Underation, C. (2011). Can’t we all get along? Content, technology, and the battle for literacy. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 12(3).

Wardyga, B. (2012). A relationship between text message volume and formal writing performance on the sat. Mass Communication & Journalism, 2(9).