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<td>LITER8 LRNRS: Is Texting Valuable or Vandalism?</td>
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<td>Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:48:09 +0000</td>
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<td>British Academy <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:britishacademy@email.britac.ac.uk"><britishacademy@email.britac.ac.uk></a></td>
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<td>British Academy <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:britishacademy@email.britac.ac.uk"><britishacademy@email.britac.ac.uk></a></td>
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<title>Is Texting Valuable or Vandalism?</title>
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<p><font color="#000066" size="2"><strong><font
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+2">LITER8 LRNRS: </font></strong>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+2"><br>
<strong>IS TEXTING VALUABLE OR VANDALISM?</strong> </font></font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Children who are heavy
users of mobile phone text abbreviations such as LOL (laughing out
loud), plz (please), l8ter (later) and xxx (kisses), are unlikely to be
problem spellers and readers, a new study funded by the British Academy
has found.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The research*, carried
out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that
levels of “textism” use could even be used to predict reading ability
and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Moreover, the proportion
of textisms used was observed to increase with age, from just 21% of
Year 4 pupils to 47% in Year 6, revealing that more sophisticated
literacy skills are needed for textism use.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The study conclusions
will come as a surprise to many who believe that textisms are
vandalising the English language.**</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The theory behind the
research, carried out by Dr Clare Wood, Reader in Developmental
Psychology at Coventry University, relates to one of the early
developing skills associated with (and believed to underpin) successful
reading and spelling development. ‘Phonological awareness’ refers to a
child’s ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of sound in
speech. For example, children who can tell which words rhyme, or what
word is left if you remove a letter, have particularly high levels of
phonological awareness.</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">After her initial studies
uncovered the link between textism use and literacy***, the British
Academy funded Dr Wood’s latest research through its small research
grants scheme. A larger scale report will follow, to be published next
year. <br>
<br>
<strong>Dr Clare Wood, British Academy grant holder,
said: </strong><br>
<br>
<em>“We began studying in this area initially to see
if there was any evidence of association between text abbreviation use
and literacy skills at all, after such a negative portrayal of the
activity in the media. We were surprised to learn that not only was
the association strong, but that textism use was actually driving the
development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children.
Texting also appears to be a valuable form of contact with written
English for many children, which enables them to practice reading and
spelling on a daily basis.</em></font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><em>”So what can we do
with this evidence? With further research, we hope to instil a change
in attitude in teachers and parents – recognising the potential to use
text-based exercises to engage children in phonological awareness
activities. In short, we suggest that children’s use of textisms is
far from problematic. If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards
among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of
it.”</em></font><br>
<br>
<font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"> *Sixty three children
participated in the study (27 boys and 36 girls) all between years 4
and 7. 81% of these children owned their own mobile phones and the
rest had regular access to one owned by someone else. The average age
at which children were given their own phone was 8.4 yrs, with 5 yrs
being the youngest age at which a phone was given to a child within the
sample.<br>
**Journalist John Humphrys, writing in the Daily Mail, went so far in
2007 to describe texters as ‘vandals who are trying to do to the
language what Ghenghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years
ago.”<br>
***B. Plester, C.Wood & C. Bell, <em>Txt msg n school literacy:
does mobile phone use adversely affect children’s written language
attainment? </em>(2008)</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Please visit <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://email.britac.ac.uk/_act/link.php?mId=A8589248786782857416866513721&tId=8268642">www.britac.ac.uk</a>
and click on the news item on the homepage to see the full report. </font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Forms of text message
abbreviation (or ‘textism’) that are used when sending messages:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Shortenings: cutting the
end off a word, losing more than one letter, e.g. bro = brother.</font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Contractions: cutting
letters, usually vowels, out of the middle of a word, e.g. txt, plz,
hmwrk.</font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">G Clippings: cutting off
only the final g in a word, e.g. goin, comin, workin, swimmin. </font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Other Clippings: cutting
off other final letters, e.g. I’v, hav, wil, com.</font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Symbols: using symbols,
including emoticons, and x used symbolically, e.g. &, @, ;-), :-p,
xxx. </font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Initialisms: a word or
group of words is represented by its initial letter, e.g. tb = text
back, lol = laughing out loud, gf = girlfriend. </font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Letter/Number Homophones:
a letter or number is used to take the place of a phoneme, syllable, or
word of the same sound, e.g. 4, 2, l8r, u, r, c. </font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Non-conventional
Spellings: a word is spelled according to legitimate English
phoneme-grapheme conversion rules, but not the conventional one used to
spell the word, e.g. nite, cum, fone, skool. </font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Accent Stylisation: a
word is spelled as it is pronounced in casual speech, e.g. gonna, wiv =
with, av = have, wanna, elp = help, anuva = another.</font></li>
<li><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Missing Apostrophes: left
out either in possessive or traditional contraction form, e.g. dads,
Im, Ive, cant.</font></li>
</ul>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Dr Clare Wood received a
small research grant from the British Academy. These grants are
available to all academics (on a competitive basis) for primary
research work in the Humanities and Social Sciences. For more
information, please visit <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://email.britac.ac.uk/_act/link.php?mId=A8589248786782857416866513721&tId=8268643">www.britac.ac.uk/funding</a>
</font></p>
<p><font color="#000066"
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The British Academy,
established by Royal Charter in 1902, champions and supports the
humanities and social sciences. It aims to inspire, recognise and
support excellence and high achievement across the UK and
internationally. For more information, please visit <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://email.britac.ac.uk/_act/link.php?mId=A8589248786782857416866513721&tId=8268644">www.britac.ac.uk</a></font><font
color="#000066" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> </font><font
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