Several decades ago, “Ain’t ain’t a word” was a favorite litany of English teachers everywhere, and they sang it whenever that offending word cropped up in a student’s speech or writing. Today, however, ain’t is a word firmly entrenched in dictionaries, nonstandard, but a word nonetheless. Now, looming on the horizon is something which may make language arts teachers long for the days of ain’t – text talk. Text talk, or text speak, is the language of abbreviations, acronyms, and emoticons people use when communicating through short message service (SMS) on their cell phones, or when instant messaging and emailing each other, and it is beginning to creep into students’ formal writing. Teachers, not just language arts teachers, hate seeing this, and many claim SMS communication is responsible for a decline in overall student writing, so they are trying to come up with ways to fight this disturbing trend. However, with the typical teen sending 80 text messages a day (Hafner, 2009), the problem is not just going to go away, so rather than fighting an uphill, and perhaps unwinnable, battle, teachers can use their students’ language to teach them formal English.
Texting and Literacy
Many teachers believe, as James Billington, Librarian of Congress, suggested, young American’s SMS communication may be damaging “the basic unit of human thought – the sentence.” (Pew Internet, 2009) However, the claim that use of text talk may be damaging children’s literacy is disputed by Clare Wood, Emma Jackson, Beverly Plester, and Lucy Wilde (2009), who claim texting allows children to experiment with language, which may enhance the development of skills used in the acquisition of literacy. They demonstrate understanding of how words can be manipul...
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...he children of the twenty-first century.
Works Cited
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Hafner, K. (2009, May 26). Texting may be taking a toll. The New York Times, D1.
Hawley Turner, K. (2009). Flipping the switch: code-switching from text speak to standard English. English Journal (High School Edition), 98(5), 60-65.
Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2009). Writing, technology, and teens. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Writing-Technology-and-Teens.aspx?r=1
Wood, C., Jackson, Emma, Plester, Beverly, & Lucy, Wilde. (2009, July 24). Children's use of mobile phone text messaging and its impact on literacy development in primary school. Retrieved from http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=16824
In the article, “Does Texting Affect Writing?”, the author Michaela Cullington conveys her speculation that texting does not correlate to how students write formal essays. At the beginning of the article Cullington introduces the term texting and the convenience texting brings. Later expressing her concern that the texting language “Textspeak” is actually affecting students writing; then contradicts these views by using primary and secondary sources (news articles, books, her own surveys and research). In addition, she uses an anecdote to tell of her own experience with texting and writing. Together with other evidences and research put together, she uncovers the debate between textspeak and formal writing. On the basis of her research, she concludes that the state of texting does not interfere with writing or writing abilities.
Michaela Cullington, a student, wrote a paper “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in 2010 for an English class. The paper is an examination of texting and the belief that it negative effective student’s writing. Cullington goes into detail about textspeak- “language created by these abbreviations”- and their use in formal writings. She organizes the paper in a way that is confusing to understand at first (pg. 1). At the end of the paper, she discusses her finding in her own research which comes to show that texting does not affect writing. But this is contradicting to the information she received from the teachers. The students and the teachers were seeing differences in the use of textspeak in formal writing. Cullington has good support for her
To ensure that formal written language is preserved, a clear distinction must be made between formal writing and texting. Students -as well as adults- must also be given sufficient practice in both areas if they are to clearly communicate their thoughts to others through either means. As quoted from Nicole Wood and Becky Wang in their presentation “Is Texting Killing the English Language”, “the most common misuses by students are ... using only the letter ‘u’ … [and] using the letter ‘r’...” These errors in formal essays are often -and in most cases- caused by confusion of the distinction between texting and formal writing, leading to an overlap between the two. The value of formal written language is its ability to clearly and distinctly communicate one’s ideas to another -and because of its overall consistency regardless of time- even those in the future. Texting, in some cases however, loses this ability to clearly communicate thoughts and ideas, and exclusively texting at home could lead to a decline in one’s ability to clearly communicate with others through writing.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, it is reported, "25% of high school seniors are proficient writers" (Cullington, 362). Jacquie Ream, a former teacher and author for K.I.S.S. expands on this statistic by stating, "we have a whole generation being raised without communication" (Cullington, 362). By this, Ream means that we as people are not physically socializing with each other, but yet using devices to replace the way we talk and express our feelings to one another instead. Ream then goes on to blame the use of acronyms and shorthand in text messages as the downfall of writing skills. Here, Ream means that because of lack of proper language we have become careless when writing. Naomi Baron, a professor at American University, states that America as a whole has become sloppy with the mechanics of writing due to texting. Both teachers in Michaela's article agree that the essence of texting is responsible for the oversight of punctuation, lack of emotion, and lastly a rise in grammatical errors in formal
Text messaging has become a norm in our generation, as technology rapidly advances and gives way to more efficient forms of communication in a fast-paced world; and many are skeptical about the influence this new form of interaction is having on our society, especially with our younger generation. David Crystal, a professor at the University of Wales, writes “2b or Not 2b?” in support of text messaging. He insists, despite those who underestimate or negate the beneficial influence text messaging has on language proficiency, that “there is increasing evidence that [texting] helps rather than hinders literacy” and that the fairly recent form of communication has actually been around for a while and “is merely the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adopt language to suit the demands of diverse settings. In contrast, Jeffery Kluger argues in “We Never Talk Anymore: The Problem with Text Messaging” that text messaging is rapidly becoming a substitute for more genuine forms of communication and is resulting in difficulty among young peoples of our generation to hold a face-to-face conversation, engage in significant nonverbal expression, and ultimately build effective relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Both writers’ present valid arguments, however, my personal experience with text messaging has led me to agree more with Crystal’s view on the matter. Text messaging is indeed having a positive effect on society by making frequent texters primarily aware of the need to be understood, as well as offering betterment of spelling and writing through practice, and reinventing and expanding on a bygone dimension of our language through the use of rebuses and abbreviations.
People’s lives are influenced by the lack of communicating. For example, in Hamilton Spectator’s article Wired For the Future, the writer explains the negative effects caused by the lack of communicating by saying, “[i]f teens stop communicating with their friends and others face to face, they will lose the ability to navigate complex social situations and that could be devastating for them when they are faced with college and job interviews....” (Hamilton Spectator 2). In other words, that when people keep forgetting how to communicate by overly using messaging systems, it could lead to negative problems in their lives: interviews or meeting with delegates. Those are important to people’s lives, because when children are independent and working in their jobs, they have to socialize with others. Communicating is unavoidable in social life, because people still communicate even though texting and messaging are taking enormous space in our world. In addition, People text too much without talking and communicating face to face. For instance, in Jessica Mazzola’s article Nighttime Texting, she showed the surveyed data of texting by saying, “...American teens send and receive an average of 1,500 texts per month” (Mazzola 1). By all means, texting is rooted deeply in people’s lives and replaced where real conversations should be. As the article mentioned, 1,500 texts per month should be affecting people’s lives directly. Communicating face-to-face and real conversations are certainly reduced dramatically as the texting increases. Therefore, people get influenced by the erosion of
In both stories “Text-Speak is Harming Teens’ Writing Skills” and “Text-Speak Can Help Students” they involve in arguing over what to call this “text-speech”, whether it being harmful or not, I would support both of the fact that it would support and harm the way of writing today, but in the way that you are putting it. The way of typing while you're writing an essay, you wouldn’t want to say: Lol (laugh out loud), tbh (to be honest) , smh (shaking my head), or R4T (Ready for Tonight). Spelling them out is better than just typing out the initials, because a lot of people don’t understand what the person is communicating to them. Yet, it can help when you are in a hurry to work or if your talking to someone on the internet.
Verheijen, Lieke. "The Effects of Text Messaging and Instant Messaging on Literacy." English Studies 94.5 (2013): 582-602.Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Oct. 2013.
I understand where these negative comments and attitudes are coming from because of the neglect of grammar in schools, and the constant interference of the media with its increase of obscene music, celebrity fashion and acceptance of profane language. But just because an argument is understood, it does not mean that is it right. It is impossible for texting to replace what we know as “proper grammar”, or “good English” because there is no consistency between texters; without consistency, it cannot become a new standard. John McWhorter goes further to argue that texting isn’t a form of writing at all, but rather a reflection of our day-to-day speech. He provides evidence that this new craze of text language really isn’t new at all and has actually been used all throughout ...
Drouin, M., & Davis, C. (2009). R U Txting? Is the Use of Text Speak Hurting Your Literacy?. Journal of Literacy Research, 44(1), 46-67. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?q=texting+spelling+grammar&id=EJ862013
We often hear news stories report on the possible negative effects texting has on students’ formal writing. These stories usually flash a picture of some student’s formal essay or class assignment containing a text-speak abbreviation in place of a formal word. For example, “u” in place of “you”. Stories like this cause educators and parents to worry that the use of texting is impairing students’ ability to write in a formal setting and is thus becoming detrimental to literacy altogether. However, do these news stories actually hold any merit or are they simply media hype? How often does textspeak actually appear in students’ writing? According to literary scholar David Crystal, “all the evidence suggests that belief in an impending linguistic disaster is a conseq...
“Our generation doesn't ring the doorbell. They text or call to say they're outside,” this line is from one of the well-known social networks, Tweeter, which shows how the way of communication has change in this modern life. According to 2013 statistics by Business Insider, in United States alone, smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average — 67 texts on a daily basis — and receive another 1,831 texts (Cocotas). Nowadays, technology such as text messaging has practically replaced traditional face to face communication among the society primarily in young generations because texting allows messages to be sent fast and effortless. In order to quickly type what they are trying to say in text messaging, people are frequently using textspeak; the language created by using abbreviation rather than complete words. Based on this phenomenon, David Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales has published an article entitled ‘2b or not 2b?’ in the Guardian on July 5, 2008 comes out with the research and studies that state texting can actually improve the literacy of children and create creativity of writing. However, by observing more critically, texting do decrease a person’s ability to switch between textspeak and the normal rules of grammar and adversely affect formal writing and conversational skills.
The use inventive spelling, abbreviations. As high school students start to use short texting, some of their grades dropped due to the spelling errors they make. So many teens get used to wing abbreviating that they just begin to write that that way. Some teenagers writing skills have turned into sentence fragments, because of the limited space they put into text sentence. In my research how does texting affect teen literacy the percentage was 64 percent of students who say they incorporated text language in their writing, 25 percent said they did so to convey have used text shortcuts a lot of students, vocabulary and grammar is also affecting their literacy. The outlook of the teachers is that. Text plus recently released results of its own survey of 1,214 teens that use their services. 43 percent of which have texted in class, they seem to pay more attention to their phone than what the teacher is teaching. They seem to have the phones that will spell the word for them so they have to worry about spelling. In the age of text message, where words are reduce to no stand abbreviating, symbols, But in my research I pointed out that technology has put new emphasis on reading and
The study of code switching began in the mid-1970s with the work of the sociolinguist John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes. Both investigated the communicative behavior within “speech communities”. Gumperz and Hymes defined “speech communities” as a, “group of speakers who share knowledge of the communicative constraints and options governing a significant number of social situations” (Diller). Gumperz and Hymes also fashioned the requirements needed to form a “speech community”. The requirements state, “All that is required is that there be at least one language in common and that rules governing basic communicative strategies be shared so that speakers can decode the social meanings carried by alternative modes of communication” (Diller). Once
Shei, C., & Pain, H. “An ESL writer’s collocational aid”. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 2000, 13, 167-182.