The Effects of Frequent Texting on Primary and Secondary School Literacy

Jake Taylor 2029157

Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary

Mr. M Koshman

November 22, 2019

CLC 11
Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

“Three objects were considered essential across all participants, cultures and genders: keys,

money and mobile phones”. (Nokia, 2014) When he realized what mobile phones have done to

influence our life in ways that we never had before. These smartphones evolved into something

much bigger today and this created a new standard of learning, communication and something

people consider essential this current era. The first text message was transmitted (Papworth,

1992), which has made something small a worldwide mandatory thing. Back in the 1950’s

classrooms where usually packed with students and everyone had to learn everything from there

teachers and books which meant they did not have instant access to the internet. This raise a

question of, has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates? Technology and the new way of

learning have great advantages and disadvantages that can have a great effect on the way we

communicate.

Since the development of the mobile phone, it has become more widespread and essential in a lot

of peoples lives. The mobile phone has evolved over the year to adapt different means of

communication such as texting and calling. These forms of communication have changed the

way we talk and have great effects on the developing community. Steve job the creator of apple

had a dream of creating an environment full of mobile cellphone to link the world together. “The

way we communicate via text is called “Textese” In this register, children make use of phonetic

replacements, such as “ur” instead of “your”” and acronyms such as “lol” All these terms were

described by (Nokia, 2014) this way of communicate has made texting a world wide

phenomenon.

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Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

The effects of textese on children’s literacy development has hardly any attention has been paid

to the effects of textese on children’s language development. Grammar development has been the

area that has been most effected. As a result of this poor detail to grammar this might lead into

another language being developed because of this and might have huge effects on how the

English and other language develop because of this. Cingel and Sundar, obtained a negative

association between the number of text messages children sent and received and the amount of

textese used (Cingel and Sundar, 2012). These finding are hard to interoperate however because

there is no real result listed in the article as too why and they had not listed any of the ratios.

“Found that the grammar choice's of primary school children 8-10 years of age” (Kemp, Wood

C and Waldron S, 2014) was related to the proportion of grammar violations they made in their

text messages. These children that did not do well on there the spelling task made more obvious

grammar mistakes than the children who had obtained a higher test score. These scores had a few

missing key area that caused them to fail that being (missing words, lack of verbal agreement,

verb and preposition merged; and grammatical homonyms). No textism at this level were

included in there measurements however in there study there was a connection to frequent

texting and the effect it had on young adults. They did another study on the same over a one year

period, asking children to transcribe there frequently used messages and for primary students it

again showed grammatical violations from texting did not predict development of their

grammatical skills over the year. In summary the previous studies show no convincing sign that

the use of textese by children negatively affect their conventional writing and spelling. If any

association does exist between textism use and literacy, it appears to be positive.

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Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

Researchers suggest different reasons for this positive association. One way that texting can be

positive is that it encourages children to text there friends ultimately strengthening there

familiarity with spelling and grammar corrections. This form of communication can ultimately

be fun for children as they are using it without even realizing it. This is also the simplest and

easiest way of communication and due to the high demand over the past few years it is more

accessible then ever. Children also learned to understand the difference between textese and the

formal way off communication ultimate greatening the positive effect that it has on children. In

an article done by David Craig, he explains, “this strengthens children’s metalinguistic

awareness” (Craig, 2011) which shows a relationship between how other cultures behave.

The effect of children’s use of textese on their grammar abilities the findings are less clear. Two

out of the four studies showed that texting had a negative effect on there vocabulary while the

other two were unclear. The focus of all four studies was to assess children’s grammar in written

language. Two of the four studies also included a mix receptive vocabulary. Written language is

considered a better more relevant way of communication due to the formalness of it. In addition,

written language, rather than spoken language, allows children to change there answers and

make adjustments if necessary according to (Kemp, Wood C and Waldron S, 2014). As a result,

effects of textese on children’s grammar might not be reflected in these type of tasks therefor

weakening result formed from these sources. The present day studies on the other hand may

show different results.

The main goal of todays studies are to investigate whether textese influences children’s

grammatical performance in spoken language. It might be expected that using more textese have

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Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

a positive impact on children’s grammar. Firstly, frequent texting may lead to overall better

knowledge of word structure and grammar due to the extra exposer to texting as a whole. If this

is true this could mean we see a positive children’s language abilities and a general measure of

children’s textese skills, namely textism ratio. Secondly, the ability for children to self learn has

a huge impact on the grammar and punctuation that we use today. Cellphones have been around

us since and created the first ever-mobile cellphone” (Cooper, 1973). The exposure to this

amount of texting could be used as a self-learning tool in grammar. As studies come in the

results are still unclear but we have an idea on what the results might be.

In conclusion studies done by Kemp, Wood C and Waldron S “showed the negative impact in

texting and the results that its has on the literacy rates for 8-10 year old’s for written language”

(Kemp, Wood C and Waldron S, 2014). While other studies showed that the impact, if any was

not that great and had little evidence. On the other side studies did show that there was a positive

impact due to the frequent use of word and spelling check that helped greatly impact the self

learning aspect that come from the frequent texting aspect.

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Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

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Kemp, Wood C and Waldron S, found that the grammar choice's of primary school children (8-

10 years of age)

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Has frequent texting reduced primary and secondary school literacy rates?

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