As a language educator and a technology in learning enthusiast who has often given presentations on using cellphones and texting for learning, I'm doubtful. I'm mostly doubtful because the study is based on English speakers. As a rather fluent speaker of Spanish, a very phonetic language where there is only 1 silent letter and the vowels sound the same regardless of where they are in a word, and a native speaker of English, a language which is far from phonetic, I'm just not buying it.Now, that isn't to say that if your students are not learning the literacy skills they should have it is the fault of texting. I'm just not believing that there is a positive impact on their ability to spell. I think there are many factors involved and that there are other skills to be gained from texting. In fact as a language educator it is becoming increasingly important to teach students proper texting abbreviations in the target language. In many countries computers aren't as ubiquitous as in the US but cellphones are everywhere and they all have inexpensive texting plans (something that the US is behind on.) For a student to go overseas for school or work, they will need to know texting abbreviations to communicate with those they befriend during their stay.
So, the final study of the impact of texting on English literacy won't be complete until next year. Regardless, I don't think any changes in our literacy are only a result of one factor and with respect to texting, I'm not convinced that the impact is one of improved spelling. What are your thoughts/predictions of the final study?
We were just commenting tonight on our 3 year old's literacy in English. It's skyrocketing, although she runs into the wacky roadblocks that a language like English throws up. It's not that it's not phonetic. It is, but it lacks the nice, neat 1:1 sound:symbol correspondence of a language like Spanish or Russian. Were she a native speaker of either of those languages, she'd be reading fluently by now.
ReplyDeleteSo what does this have to do with literacy and texting? Well, I think we may find ourselves with two levels of literacy in English if texting abbreviations remain as common as they currently are. Since many of the texting abbreviations _do_ reflect a 1:1 sound:symbol correspondence, I would anticipate that a nascent reader (of English) would quickly be able to decipher text messages at an early stage. Only later would the learner/reader be able to expand their decoding skills to include the many seemingly inconsistent, seemingly non-phonetic codes of English. (Don't forget, English is a mongrel language...and much of what seems non-phonetic really is--in its source language. But that's a reply/rant for another time.)
-C