Response to Article

Texting May Lead to Bad Grammar

Megan Gannon, News Editor

Date:26 July 2012 Time 5:20 PM ET

Texting could lead to a decline in language skills, warns a new study that found tweens who text are more likely to fall short on grammar tests.

Many tweens take shortcuts or use so-called techspeak when sending text messages. “They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for great, or an initial, like, LOL for laugh out loud,” Northwestern researcher Drew Cingel explained in a statement. Other shortcuts include dropping non-essential letters, such as changing the word “would” to “wud.”

To study the effect of these habits, Cingel gave a group of middle school students in central Pennsylvania a grammar assessment test. The students were then given a survey that asked them to detail how many texts they send and receive, their opinions on the importance of texting and the number of shortcuts in their last three sent and received text messages.

The results of the survey and the test, which were reported in the journal New Media & Society, showed a link between poor grammar scores and frequent texting. What’s more, both sending and receiving techspeak-riddled texts seemed to affect how poorly the students performed on the test. This suggests tweens might not be initiating all of their bad language habits, but might also be influenced by the grammatically incorrect messages sent by their friends and family.

“In other words, if you send your kid a lot of texts with word adaptations, then he or she will probably imitate it,” said S. Shyam Sundar, a Penn State communications professor who worked with Cingel. “These adaptations could affect their offline language skills that are important to language development and grammar skills, as well.”

In addition to a natural desire to imitate friends and family, the researchers speculated that some texting tweens made poor grammar choices in more formal writing because they had trouble switching between techspeak and the normal rules of grammar.

My Response:

 The results of the experiment suggested that texting leads to poor grammar in the teenage demographic. The article focuses on the concept of techspeak otherwise known as texting lingo. It is suggests that if children and teens use techspeak, their grammar will be poor. I myself use social media daily and can aid in the idea that poor grammar is used in texting, tweeting, and facebooking. I did not agree with the article suggesting that parents should watch what they send their children via text message. A parent plays a huge role in molding a child’s grammar; however, children do not learn grammar specifically through text messaging. Social media plays a very important role in today’s society. Children are exposed to incorrect grammar constantly.

Teenagers need to understand the difference between professional versus casual speech. Techspeak is acceptable for social media but is not for formal writing. The separation between the two different written lingos needs to be separated. In today’s society, techspeak has become an accepted norm; however, some people forget to switch from techspeak to professional. Teenagers need to be aware that there is a difference in the way they should write in a formal essay versus how they should text. Today, the issue of poor grammar does not get enough attention because social media is prevalent. Schools need to address the issue of professional versus casual speech in the classroom in hopes that one day grammar will become more important.