Kids Understand The Difference Between Texting And Writing

from the not-so-stupid-after-all... dept

For years, now, we've been hearing horror stories about how kids who are growing up learning "txt spk" on instant messenger programs and via phone SMS messages are hurting their ability to write proper English. There was never actually any evidence of this -- other than some anecdotal horror stories. Also, as we pointed out, there's nothing wrong with understanding txt abbreviations as long as the person knows what is appropriate at the right time. It's like knowing two different languages -- which most parents and teachers consider to be a good thing. Thus, the focus shouldn't be on freaking out about kids learning to tap away in abbreviated format, but in making sure they know what's appropriate for what venues. Supporting this theory is a new study suggesting that kids who text have comparable writing skills to those who don't. The study was quite small, and the methodology could clearly be questioned -- but it is some initial evidence that kids are smart enough to understand when text talk is appropriate and when it's not. Much more interesting, though, was the finding that those who used messaging regularly also wrote more concisely. While the article suggests this is a downside, being able to write concisely is a useful talent. If text messaging helps people better organize their thoughts this way, perhaps it's a benefit.
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  1. identicon
    Vonna, 23 Dec 2004 @ 2:29pm

    Its Better

    i really thing IM is not takin focus on children actually if they put IM in public schools then students will be in school more often because the children who are not in school are on {MYSPACE,TAGWORLD,and all sorts of stuff children get on} so i really think public schools should have IM.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Zuby, 18 Oct 2007 @ 9:50am

    English

    We can say that through texting they write after all..whatever it is but it is writing anyway...so in this sense it has certain positive effects too though if we start talking about negative effects there still can be a long list.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    williamchambers, 15 Mar 2019 @ 3:35am

    writing

    It’s stupid of adults to think that children don’t know such simple things. Now they are much smarter even than us because they initially had invaluable knowledge. My son is such a great writer. He works for a platform, here is a https://essayexplorer.com/ to it, that does reviews for various essay writing sites and other types of work. Also, all the works and services, such as Edusson.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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