Text Messaging and Literacy

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• Text Messaging and Literacy
• Emma Jackson, Lucy Hart, Clare Wood and Bev
  Plester.

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Text Messaging and Literacy

• Why look at phone use?
• According to the Mobile Data Association, in 2008
  78.9 billion text messages were sent in the UK.
• Ofcoms (2006) media literacy audit revealed that
  49 of 8-11 year olds had their own phones
• 82 of 8-11 year olds sent texts
• Our current research suggests that in the UK some
  children are as young as five-years-old when they
  receive their first mobile phone.
• In 2008 93 of 227 UK 9-11 year olds either had
  their own mobile phone (69) or could use someone
  elses freely,
• 54 reported texting more than talking only 26
  reported talking more than texting.

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Text Messaging and Literacy

• Widespread concern over impact of textisms on
  literacy standards.
• Texters are vandals who are doing to our
  language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours
  800 years ago
• (John Humphreys writing in the Daily Mail, 28th
  September 2007).
• Scotsman.com has a short article titled, Mobile
  phone warning. It reads
• Examiners yesterday issued a new warning on text
  messaging, saying that abbreviated phone texting
  and street slang are to blame for deteriorating
  levels of spelling and grammar.
• Even bright pupils were making almost
  unforgivable mistakes with simple words

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Text Messaging and Literacy

• Cell Phone Texting Can Endanger Spelling
• Posted Dec 6th, 2007 Peter Woronoff
• Mobile phones are rampant these days even third
  graders have them for communication, and games.
  These gadgets are a lot more expensive and
  advanced than the cell phones that their parents
  possessed at their age.
• These kids are knowledgeable and creative with
  mobile texting. Sadly, "shorts," or short cuts
  used, influence their success in spelling. Even
  when chatting on the internet, they make use of
  these trends.
• This alarms educators. There are numerous people
  involved in texting these days. The popularity of
  SMS (short message sending) captivates both young
  and the old. There is no problem among older
  people because their spelling skills are more
  established.

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Text Messaging and Literacy

• Children are more prone to commit errors because
  they have read less, and prefer to play games, or
  watch TV, etc. Much of their time is influenced
  by what is going on in their environment. So we
  have to be watchful that they not look stupid
  because they cannot spell simple common words.
  Texting has come along with a flourish, making a
  big impact among them. This habit forming menace
  can influence kids to spell incorrectly or get
  confused about the correct usage.
• We should not tolerate these activities, else it
  might endanger their progress. Many common daily
  words have been shortened by SMS. It is likely
  that it might affect much of their ability to
  spell, since their minds are in the formation
  stage.
• Can we find means to minimize their use or remind
  them that texting dulls spelling? A
  large part of the problem are the media ads that
  glamorize these already popular habits.

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What is a textism

• Shortenings - bro tues
• Contractions - txt hmwrk
• G-clippings - swimmin goin
• Other clippings - hav wil
• Missing apostrophes - cant dads
• Acronyms - BBC UK
• Initialisms - ttfn tvm lol
• Symbols - _at_ ? lt) xxx
• Homophones - 2moro l8r
• Misspellings - comming
• Unconventional spellings - fone rite skool
• Accent stylisation - wiv elp anuva gonna
• (Adapted from Thurlow, 2003)

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Plester, Wood Bell (2008)

• Study 1
• Are there differences in the academic abilities
  of children who send text messages and those who
  do not?
• 65 11 and 12-year-old children
• 78.5 had sole use of a mobile
• Assessed on Cognitive Abilities Test
• Translation of standard and text sentences
• Grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors
  added together as English errors in the
  translation of the text message into English
• Ratio of textisms to total words used calculated
  in translations of standard sentence in textspeak.

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Plester, Wood Bell (2008)

• Children who didnt text scored significantly
  higher on the verbal CAT but
• Children who used the greatest proportion of
  textisms in the translation exercise had the best
  verbal reasoning performance (p.007)
• Children with the greatest proportion of textisms
  also had the lowest non-verbal reasoning
  performance (p-.001)
• No difference in textism ratio across the three
  messaging groups.

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Plester, Wood Bell (2008)

• So what about standard spelling ability?
• Study 2
• If the textisms are detrimental, then knowledge /
  use of them should be negatively correlated with
  spelling ability.
• Followed up with 35 children who completed
• British Ability Scales assessment of spelling
• Textspeak to English Translation
• English to Text Message Translation
• Positive association found between spelling and
  textism use (p.001).
• Textisms categorised into different forms, and
  the most phonetic forms were significantly
  related to spelling ability, and these two forms
  alone could predict 32.9 of the variance in
  spelling scores.

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Plester, Wood Bell (2008)

• Intriguing results
• Texting per se seemed to be associated negatively
  with literacy but textism use appears to be
  associated with verbal ability generally and
  spelling ability specifically.
• Children with greater verbal ability seem to be
  most able to exploit textisms
• So, is the relationship between spelling and
  textism use attributable to general verbal
  ability?
• Or, could it be that textism use is linking to
  phonological awareness development
• Crucial skill that underpins literacy
  development.

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Plester, Wood Joshi (2009)

• Needed a more detailed analysis of the
  relationships between verbal ability,
  phonological awareness, spelling and reading
  attainment.
• Study 3
• 88 10-11 year-old children assessed on
• Vocabulary
• Short term memory
• Reading
• Spelling
• Phonological awareness
• Text message composition (scenario based)

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Plester, Wood Joshi (2009)

• Textism use was significantly associated with
  reading ability and phonological awareness
• Just short of significance with spelling this
  time
• Phonological awareness does mediate some of the
  relationship between textism use and reading
  ability
• But
• Textism use was still able to account for a
  significant amount of variance in reading ability
  after phonological awareness, alphabetic decoding
  ability, short term memory, and the age at which
  the children got their first mobile phone were
  accounted for (p.035)
• Textism use is adding value to reading skills
• Ludic language use?

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Plester, Wood Joshi (2009)
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Wood, Plester Bowyer (2008)

• Currently working on a British Academy funded
  project looking longitudinally at natural text
  messaging and literacy outcomes over an academic
  year.
• Study 4
• 63 children completed a full year of testing so
  far, recruited from Years 4,5,6 and 7.
• Should have 119 children by July.
• All have their own mobile phones
• Assessed on
• Verbal IQ
• Phonological awareness
• Reading
• Spelling
• Textism use

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Wood, Plester Bowyer (2008)

• Textism use at the beginning of the year was
  associated with
• Reading (time 1) r.366 .339 including this
  years data
• Spelling (time 1) r.426 .270 including this
  years data
• Non Word Reading (time 1) r.306 .206
  including this years data
• Phonological awareness (time 1) r.382 .189
  including this years data
• Reading (time 2) r.291
• Spelling (time 2) r.280
• Phonological Awareness (time 2) r.351
• Textism use could predict (after accounting for
  IQ)
• Reading, R2 change.050, p.043
• Phonological Awareness, R2 change.093, p.013
• Literacy skills could not predict textism use
• Textism use drives PA and reading development,
  not the other way around

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Current Intervention Study

• Becta Funded Small-Scale Intervention
• Study 5
• Considering the impact of texting on literacy
  skills by providing mobile phones to 9-10 year
  old children who do not have their own.
• Monitoring their impact on literacy skills over
  an academic term.
• Issues around teachers perceptions of mobile
  phones and mobile phone use on school premises.

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Intervention Study
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Intervention Study
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Intervention Study
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Intervention Study
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Intervention Study
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Intervention Study
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Fluency Scores
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Current Work
IN PRAISE OF TXTING ABBRVTNS       You look at a
letter written by a 17th or 18th century letter
writer, and you'll see far more abbreviation.