How Texting Affects Literacy in Teenagers Essay Example

either during 1989 or 1992. The first history attributes the first text message as a sequence of Numberss sent and read upside down through a Motorola pager by former NASA employee Edward Lantz.

The 1992 history provinces that Neil Papworth sent a message through a Vodafone GSM web with the usage of a desktop computing machine. This text message contained the simple statement “Merry Christmas. ” It wasn’t until Riku Pihkonen. an technology pupil. came around that texts were sent on the more commercially recognizable Nokia Mobile phones. As this construct was foremost used in the early 90’s. the popularity of the text message did non ab initio catch on with the general populace. The figure of text users began to turn at the bend of the century. and now statistics show that over 85 % of people in Europe and North America are users of text messaging ( Urmann. 2009 ) .

There is a long and baronial history of seeking to alter the English language’s notoriously unlogical system of spelling. The fact that through. rough. dough. Big Dipper. hiccup and trough all terminal with -ough. yet none of them sound the same as any of the others. is the kind of thing that has been annoying poets and scholars of English for rather some clip. Advocates of ”fixing” this wayward writing system have included some of the most outstanding names in American history. Benjamin Franklin suggested altering the alphabet. and Andrew Carnegie provided money for people to analyze the job.

President Theodore Roosevelt issued an edict in 1906 that gave the Government Printing Office a list of 300 words with new spellings: job instances like craftsman.

kissed and woe were to be changed to artizan. kist and wo. Roosevelt was mostly ignored by the G. P. O. . and the affair was shortly dropped. Although this issue has been extensively studied and argued over by these and other eminent minds. there has been an about complete deficiency of success in set uping any significant advancement. And so it is instead eccentric that the first widespread alteration in how people spell English words appears to hold come from a group of ( mostly ) immature people directing text messages to one another with cellular phones and other electronic devices.

You may non wish seeing the phrase ”LOL — U R gr8” on the page. but it is common plenty that you are likely to understand it. Why have such accidental ”reforms” succeeded where coevalss of dedicated rational efforts have non? And will they last? For most of the history of the linguistic communication. English talkers took a dreamy attack to spelling ; the impression that a word should ever be spelled the same manner is a much more recent innovation than the linguistic communication itself.

The standardisation of English spelling began in the sixteenth century. and although it is ill-defined at precisely what indicate our spelling became set. what is certain is that of all time since it happened. people have complained that the regulations of spelling. such as they are. merely don’t make sense. Possibly the most successful effort at spelling reform ( at least in America ) was wrought by Noah Webster. who managed to forever do Americans view the British honor and theater as off-kilter. Some part of Webster’s finding to

alter -our to -or and -re to -er was due to nationalist ardor ; he wanted his countrymen to interrupt free of the orthographic bonds of their oppressors.

He was perceptibly less successful in converting Americans of the public-service corporation of many of his other thoughts. like spelling oblique as obleek. machine as masheen and turn out as proov. I contacted several of the spelling-reform organisations in operation today to inquire them about their feelings on following text-messaging stenographies as a sort of spelling reform. Alan Mole. the president of the American Literacy Council. when asked if his group had of all time considered allying itself with the texters. said that it had non. although he added that text messaging ”does serve the intent of raising consciousness” about the fact ”that there are different ways of doing people spell. ” The council. which has picketed the Scripps National Spelling Bee. prefers its ain phonic method of spelling reform. called SoundSpel.

The group offers a downloadable version of SoundSpel ( ententetranslator. com/IDL. htm ) that can immediately interpret an full novel’s worth of standard English into a more spellable. if less recognizable. signifier. The sister organisation of the council. the British-based Spelling Society. does non recommend following texting conventions. either. but this is less surprising. because it does non recommend following any peculiar attack at all. Jack Bovill. the society’s president. wrote in an e-mail message: ”Our present purpose is to raise consciousness of the jobs caused by the abnormality of English spelling. We DO NOT back up solutions. ” Whether texting conventions are supported by organized spelling reformers or non. can they perchance solve the trouble of

spelling our troublesome linguistic communication?

David Crystal. the writer of ”Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. ” told me in an e-mail message that ”there’s nil in texting to propose spelling reform. ” observing that texting relies to a great extent on abbreviations. which he sees as originative stylings. non systematic betterments. He added that there is really small that is new about most of the abbreviations and lexical shortenings that make texting so crazing to so many. In fact. he said. with the exclusion of a few recent mintages like LOL. ”virtually all the normally used 1s can be found in English a century ago. ” For illustration. bn ( been ) . btwn ( between ) and wd ( would ) can all be found in a 1942 lexicon of abbreviations. Naomi Baron. a professor of linguistics at American University and writer of ”Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. ” portions Crystal’s position.

She predicts that the figure of ”textisms” will halt turning as people continue to develop more proficiency in utilizing hand-held devices and as the devices continue to turn more sophisticated than simple telephone touch tablets. She adds that portion of the entreaty of texting stenographies is their freshness. and that that will melt. Crystal did state that a certain sum of spelling reform might finally come from the Internet: ”People who try to enforce reform ‘top down’ seldom win. But a ‘bottom up’ motion might good hold some lasting effects. ” Given that the general attitude toward text messaging is that it comes from the lingual underside. it may good be that this masheen-sent tongue franca may proov to one twenty-four

hours be less obleek than it is now.

Introduction

The quickly turning rate of phone engineering at this modernised coevals is sort of upseting. It seems that anyplace you can see people glued to their phones’ screen. fingers typing off. On pavements. school premises. even at the crowded topographic points. Majority of these people are adolescents. What are some of the effects that texting is holding on the adolescent literacy? That is the inquiry that the research worker explores in this paper. The research worker tackles about the impacts that texting is doing on adolescents. the impacts that doing the teenagers’ linguistic communication and composing accomplishments presents.

Text messaging or texting. is the act of typing and directing a brief. electronic message between two or more nomadic phones or fixed or portable devices over a phone web harmonizing to. The term originally referred to messages sent utilizing the Short Message Service or SMS ; it has grown to include messages incorporating image. picture. and sound content. known as MMS messages. The transmitter of a text message is known as a texter. while the service itself has different colloquialisms depending on the part. It is merely referred to as a text here in Philippines. ( Wikipedia Foundation Inc. . 2013 )

Background of the Study

With the radical new signifiers of communicating that engineering has introduced comes a argument on what consequence these new digital mediums have on literacy. In the age of text messaging. where words are reduced to nonstandard abbreviations and symbols. many people question the hereafter of literacy particularly to adolescents. There is no reasoning that adolescents nowadays text more than of all time.

The bulk of population claims

that the short manus and abbreviated features of text messaging are doing adolescents lazy. non coercing them to utilize the proper grammar and spelling that adolescents learn in school. Sing the popularity of text messaging to adolescents. it is believed that this type of communicating is destructing the manner people read. believe and compose. Text messaging was even preferred by some as “The Dumbest Generation” .

One survey ( Hogan et al. . 2012 ) states that cell phones are going a necessity this modern twenty-four hours. to the point where every adolescent and grownup must hold at least one. Persons are quickly depending to these devices for communicating intents. Most new engineerings such as text messaging emerge on the societal and academic scene. Many people are cautious and untrusting of new engineerings that they worry about the Riff it could do in the talk of literacy. It is of import for faculty members to encompass the importance of conveying day-to-day literacies used by younger coevalss to prosecute them more critically in the talk of linguistic communication and engineering (Thurlow. 2006) Based on John Myhra’s article. “Negative Effectss of Texting in the Classroom” . the over-use of texting has been damaging to the manner pupils write officially in the school premises and even in the society. The character restrictions of text messages have caused pupils to organize their ain manner of authorship and nomenclatures. This manner has caused them to transport it over to formal academic authorship undertakings. Students’ Hagiographas are small to no deepness. awful grammar. and are abridging about every word they write. Texting has negatively affected the manner pupils write. ( Myhra. 2010

)

Objective of the Study

The aim of this survey is to cognizant and educate the readers on the possible effects of text messaging to individual’s literacy. particularly to adolescents. This survey besides aims to educate readers on how to command and minimise teenagers’ text messaging dependence. Through reading this survey. readers will hold knowledge on how text messaging affects the literacy of a adolescent.

Significance of the Study

This survey is important to every person. most likely to adolescents because about all of the population nowadays trades with text messaging. This survey would be a great aid to aware and remind one’s ego on non to indulge to text messaging that much and knowing plenty on how text messaging might impact one’s literacy. By that means. texters will be responsible plenty to command themselves from texting often and this would be an assistance to minimise text messaging dependence.

Before Howard University pupil Imani Wiltshire shoots off an electronic mail. she reads it over for errors. In a civilization that uses abbreviations and ignores grammar and spelling in favour of velocity. the 21-year-old bases out among her equals. She cares about her linguistic communication use. she says. because she is majoring in English and secondary instruction.

Text messaging and instant messaging have their ain slang of acronyms and abbreviations that hasten communicating and salvage finger work. Though the slang is demoing up in more formal authorship. such as in e-mails to college professors and employers. it remains up to debate whether the English linguistic communication. both spoken and written. is deteriorating “IRL” – in existent life. “Our coevals is the in-between transition.

We don’t cognize which manner to travel. ” Ms. Wiltshire

says. “Some of us still push for books and older systems. As we get older. we see more accent on computing machine cognition and computing machine literacy. ” E-mail. text messaging and electronic communications have “pretty much destroyed literacy and how pupils communicate. ” says Kitty Ellison. manager of the authorship plan
in the section of English at Howard.

“Because text messaging and e-mail don’t require pupils to conform to standard English. this gets picked up in standard authorship. ” Ms. Ellison says. Ms. Ellison receives e-mail messages from pupils that follow the dictates of the informal method of communicating alternatively of those of standard authorship. She asks pupils who want to discourse a class alteration. a job with a professor or another issue to set their concerns into composing. but what she gets back frequently contains lowercase letters. abbreviations and unconventional linguistic communication usage. she says.

“It seeps into their Deoxyribonucleic acid that this is the manner you communicate. ” she says. Add to that the fact pupils are reading less and what they are reading is non preferred by English instructors. such as magazines alternatively of authoritative literature. Ms. Ellison says. “We have a job in this state with folks. grownups every bit good as pupils. non truly understanding or cognizing how to read. ” she says. “It requires focal point. … and you have to hold the clip to sit down and read” Michael Olmert. a lector in the English section at the University of Maryland in College Park. agrees that the diminution in reading is the cause of the linguistic communication deteriorating. though he besides points out that the linguistic communication ever is deteriorating

and germinating as a affair of class.

“People are non reading. non because they’re stupe. [ There are ] excessively many picks. ” says Mr. Olmert. who holds a doctor's degree in mediaeval surveies and English literature. He writes telecasting docudramas for the Discovery Channel on history and nature. “It’s much easier to watch Television than read a book. ” The diminution in reading began with the age of telecasting in the early twentieth century. Mr. Olmert says. Most Americans spend 10 to 15 hours a hebdomad watching telecasting. clip that used to be exhausted reading or gazing out the window. he says. “We’re attention-span-challenged. ” he says.

“Teachers try to force reading. but there’s so many other things to acquire our attending. ” The National Endowment for the Arts reported in the November 2007 research study “To Read or non to Read. A Question of National Consequence” that Americans are passing less clip reading and that their reading comprehension accomplishments are gnawing. The study assembled informations on reading tendencies from more than 40 beginnings. including federal bureaus. universities and associations. to analyse the reading forms of kids. adolescents and grownups in the United States. The study states that about half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasance and that teens and immature grownups devote less leisure clip than older age groups to reading. When reading does occur. it competes with the usage of other media. the study says.

“There’s a sense of laxity with the English linguistic communication right now. grammar and otherwise. but whether the linguistic communication is deteriorating from the usage of these media. we have to wait a little

more for the information. ” says Sunil Iyengar. manager of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. “Because so much of engineering is new in comparative footings. there haven’t been any long-run. sustained surveies. peculiarly on the relationship of engineering and linguistic communication. ” he says. Even so. reading material online can non replace the concentration required for traditional reading formats. Mr. Iyengar says. “Most print media requires that you look at it closely and read it in additive manner. ” he says.

“People go on a Web site to acquire information and are non needfully making reading. They might plane something and catch some information. ” The outgrowth of the telegraph in 1840 can be compared to today’s electronic communicating. says Allan Metcalf. executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. a scholarly association dedicated to the survey of the English linguistic communication in North America.

He is a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville. Ill. The telegraph. like text and instant messaging. encouraged brief messages. paid for by the word. that used abbreviations and codification words. says Mr. Metcalf. who holds a doctor's degree in English. Though text and instant messages do non hold to be paid for by the word. the messages take more clip and attempt to input than typing on a keyboard. Mr. Metcalf says.

“My anticipation is this is merely another manner of composing that has a different manner. a different grammar. at least a different set of regulations for spelling. It’s non traveling to alter the basic manner we write. ” he says. This manner of composing gives pupils another mercantile establishment for composing.

says Michele Schmidt Moore. instructional supervisor of English and linguistic communication humanistic disciplines for Loudoun County Public Schools. “I think the pupils know when to utilize what … and where to utilize things suitably. ” Ms Schmidt Moore says. “Maybe in a unsmooth bill of exchange. you might see a lowercase missive. In the concluding bill of exchange. they write standard English. ”

Unit of measurement Writing Undertaking:
Political Activism through Literacy

Research an issue of concern and see a manner of utilizing literacy in any medium to joint and advance the cause. Examples to see are the concerns environing freedom of information in visible radiation of the Manning/Snowden/Wikileaks contentions or socio-economic justness issues in communities of your ain. In the first illustration. fact-finding journalists have used intelligence articles to re-frame the predicament of the information militants and pull public understanding. The Reflect web site promotes literacy as a societal justness issue for hapless adult females in developing states and so on.

Using the texts of this unit as points of inspiration. outline a 3-4 page. double-spaced explication of your chosen cause and discourse how literacy can advance consciousness or be utilized as portion of a sustainable solution. Aim to include within this paper a description and overview of your chosen issue and to supply adequate context for uninformed readers to understand exhaustively non merely the issue and why it’s relevant. but how literacy can be used in a progressive manner to transform the state of affairs. Think about how descriptive and factual information can be used to convert an audience of possible sympathisers who may go interested in back uping your enterprises.

Evaluations for this undertaking will be based

on summarisation of the issue. originative application of transformative thoughts and clear. concise. professional usage of linguistic communication to motivate some signifier of activism on behalf of the cause. Besides. expression to get down including commendations as portion of your procedure of composing in the academy.