Texting and Literacy; Literature Review
Recently, technology has become the main way for people to communicate with other people who are long distance or that live in the same house as them. People communicate via social media or over text from one persons phone to the other. The use of texting is growing as more people get cellphones and the technology in the world continues to enhance. The texting is affecting the way people are writing and it is a concern. Researchers are concerned that it is affecting people 's writing and literacy in a bad way. Texting in children and in adults are affected in different ways. The textese or text talk that people use is considered the main reason …show more content…
Eventually, text language will be a part of the English language. It is believed that language problems existed before the use of text messaging because of the lack of teaching language skills in school. There was a test given to eighty eight British students where they tested the density of textisms, reading ability, alphabetic/orthographic decoding ability, spelling ability, vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness. The results proved that there were no correlations between the textisms and spelling or alphabetic/orthographic decoding ability. But there were positive correlations between textism density and reading, vocabulary and phonological …show more content…
There is proof and evidence on how texting is not affecting literacy in children. Wood, Kemp, and Waldron write, "For example, 8- to 12-year-old children’s use of textisms accounted for growth in spelling ability over an academic year"(415). Therefore, textism use is a positive thing for children. Wood, Kemp, and Waldron conducted a study to test children 's grammar skills compared to their textism use in their last three texts and figured out that their test needed further research. The studies for adults were inconsistent on how texting affects their literacy. The results include better informal writing and poorer formal writing but undergraduates and non-users of textisms were found to keep the same scores in reading and spelling. Wood, Kemp, and Waldron prove this by writing:
Young adults’ estimates of their own textism use were linked to better informal writing for all participants, but to poorer formal writing for those with some or no college education. Undergraduate users and non-users of textisms were found not to differ in their reading or spelling scores. Researchers who looked at adults’ actual textism use have observed negative links with some, but not all literacy skills.