How Text Messaging Is Affecting Literacy Essay

Kate Hafner’s article, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll” claims that texting is an issue to teenagers around the world. As an illustration, Hafner starts the article by identifying that teenagers send a drastic amount of texts in their everyday lives. according to the Nielsen Company, “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008”(1). This is just one of the examples of many that portrays teenagers around the world send many text messages. Along with teenagers sending many texts a day, hafner also shows in this article that texting is affecting teenager's life in many different ways for example, preventing teenagers' way of becoming independent. Just as professor Turkle presented,

Authors such as David Crystal along with language teachers like Shirley Holm supply Cullington with valuable experiences and opinions on why texting benefits young adults. Cullington picked up that texting allows students to have a “comfortable form of communication” (365) which aids them in their growth in the English subject. After the author gathered a great number of sources and opinions from either side, she then decided to conduct her own experiment to which she got her own results.

Texting is harming the ability for this current generation of children to write in a formal manner. “Digitalk” is what Kristen Hawley Turner of Fordham University calls, text-speak.For example, many teens will text “g2g” in replace of the actual words “got to go”.In my opinion, texting is ruining students’ abilities to write a formal essay,letter,etc.

Although her study supports the hypothesis that texting and writing have no relationship to one another, Cullington (and the researchers whose work she analyzed) recognizes the significance of new technology and society’s evolving modes of communication. She writes, “The use of text mes- saging as a common means of communication is becoming increasingly popular; therefore, this issue should continue to be examined” (94). Not surprisingly, the popularity of texting has increased since the time of Cullington’s article and so too has research on its effect on student writ- ing. What Cullington may not have anticipated, however, are the ways in which texting itself has changed. How might innovations such as Internet access, various “apps,” and software advance- ments have changed texting in the mere two years since Michaela Cullington published her article in 2011?

We as a society are evolving with each generation to come. We are getting stronger, faster, and smarter. Just as cell phones are no longer square blocks with numbers on them and TV’s are not in black and white, writing itself has also evolved. Once upon a time many wrote and spoke in a Shakespearean form of language and over the years it has evolved into something we call modern English. In recent years, technology has advanced greatly and cell phones have become one of our primary use of communication. With cell phones came a new form of writing called text messaging. Text messaging is used to send short, concise messages to anyone around the world. Often times text messages involve the use of abbreviations which stand for different things and also involves frequent use of emoji’s as a form of expression. This form of writing is now considered informal writing and is not acceptable in academic settings. In Michaela Cullington’s essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” she touches on both sides of whether texting is hindering students writing or if it’s actually having a positive effect. She then makes is clear that she believes most students are educated enough to know when text speak is appropriate and when it’s not so therefore it has no effect on students. Although, I agree with her thesis, she lacks credibility due to her insufficient evidence. In addition, I also believe

Texting has fast become the preferred form of communication for young adults; however, students need to be dissuaded from texting during class because of the result in loss of valuable class time, lack of effective communication skills, and consistent use of improper English leading to a negative impact on students’ learning.

We carry our cellphones with us at all times, and with all this online connection, you would think that stepping back and disconnecting is a huge achievement. But this is a new way of life. Nathan Jurgenson, in his article “The IRL Fetish” says, “We have come to understand more and more of our lives through the logic of digital connection. Social media is more than something we log onto; it’s something we carry within us. We can’t log off.”. He explains how we are so deeply connected with technology that it is nearly impossible to stay ‘old-fashioned’. We are learning to accept technological advancements because they are inevitable. In other words, to adapt to this new form of literacy is much easier than avoiding it. In recognition that texting truly is literacy, one English teacher had her students put excerpts of Richard III into “text speak” to show that they fully understand the material. Educators are embracing texting as a new form of learning because it clearly is not going away. Students enjoy texting as a way to escape reality and fail to recognize the literary benefits. Texting will continue to encourage students to read and write as well as improve spelling with phonological

After reading Texting and Writing, by Michaela Cullington, I do not agree with many of her viewpoints. Cullington argues that texting does not affect a students writing. Textspeak, the abbreviation and shortening of words like used when writing a text message, does affect the way a student writes because they use the abbreviations, and their writings tend to lack punctuation. When a writer uses excessive abbreviations on a regular basis they can get stuck in the writer’s head causing them to use them in all of their writings. Cullington did make good points of her own opinion on texting and writing in her piece, but I disagree with her and believe that texting and

There has been claims that texting can adversely affect students’ formal writing skills. Michaela Cullington, author of “Does Texting Affect Writing”, responds to these claims by saying that texting does not affect students’ formal writing but helps them improve it. She mentions that texting teaches students’ how to write concisely, students’ know that textspeak is only appropriate when texting and not when writing formally, and that texting allows students’ to have a casual setting to practice their writing which help improve their formal writing. All of Cullington’s arguments are invalid; texting does harm students’ formal writing in multiple ways such as: writing texts “concisely” is not beneficial since students will forget how to expand

“Does Texting Affect Writing” is about Michaela Cullington, the author, comparing two opposing perspectives. The perspective is whether texting hinders the formal writing skills of students or not. Millennials are a population that cannot go a day without looking at their phones so, due to the “increasing use of mobile phones, concerns have been raised about its influence on their literacy skills. No matter if it is sending or receiving a text or checking social media sites, technology has taken over the lives of the young generations. The essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in They Say, I say exposes how the significant action of texting and using textspeak, i.e. abbreviations and symbols, may be hindering the writing skills of teenaged students. People communicate using textese to “more quickly type what they are trying to say” (Cullington, 2017, p. 361). Textese is a “register that allows omission of words and the use or textisms: instances of non-standard written language such as 4ever” (Van Dijk, 2016). When these people use textese often, it can become habitual and transition into their school assignments. Michaela Cullington constantly repeats words and uses comparisons and abnormalities for the concerns about textspeak, the responses to the concerns, methods and the discussion of findings on the topic to be analyzed.

She interviews seven students and two teachers from different high schools and colleges with a list of question about the impact of texting on writing. She also put her effort on analyzing student writing samples for instances of textspeak. In addition, her research suggests that there's no response about texting has a bad influence on formal writing from both students and teachers. Thus, students are able to "recognize the difference between texting friends and writing formally and know what is appropriate in each situation" as well as textspeak is not bleeding into academic or professional writing. I agree with her on this point. Still, there are many younger generations in Middle school who starts texting in short and addicted to it. As short-texting is new to those young teenagers, they are pretty excited to communicate by texting with friends without awareness. And if middle school is where students can practice in construct sentences and organize ideas, will texting impacts them on formal writing and will it cause

This section contains the analysis of the journal article. This journal article contains good language. The tone of the writing is formal and is able to be understood by the reader because of the simple word choice. The language used is good because there were several good vocabularies used such as phonological awareness and rapid naming. The authors also came into a clear conclusion where they are able to make a stand that text messages have positive effects on children’s literacy. However, if it was for adults, it is hard to make a stand. The journal article also showed rhetorical devices that focused more on ethos and logos that can maintain clarity and interest among readers. The authors showed good visualization of the topic such as text

In recent discussion of, “Does Texting Affects Writing” by Michaela Cullington, one view is that texting has a negative impact on teens and their writing. Cullington shows both sides of what students, teachers, and professors have to say about the issue of texting; yet after research this belief may not prove to be true. Then she writes about personal experience regarding the issue.

Thesis statement: In this paper, I will discuss how the frequent use of text messaging by teens today negatively affects literacy and I will offer suggestions that parents and teachers can implement and teach in order to raise reading, writing, and vocabulary skills.

Texting is a fairly new form of communication that has taken the world by storm. It became popular around 2001, and originally had its limitations, such as the 160-character limit. But now that technology has advanced, texting has followed along and is now a convenient, casual, and a more immediate way of communicating. So naturally, texting has evolved also in terms of the language used within it. We see this mostly in the form of abbreviations and short hand spelled words. Some people argue that texting has ruined the English language. Studies and observations have shown that the benefits of texting and cyber speak are much more broad then expected. Textisms have been shown to increase phonology skills, brain activity, creativity and provide a relatable outlet for students in education.