The Negative Effects Of Text Literacy

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For many years there has been a debate whether the use of text messaging is harming the formal standard of English in literacy. As more and more students worldwide acquire and use mobile phones, so are they engaging themselves in text messaging. Such is the circumstances that some lecturers are voicing concerns that students writing abilities have the risk of being sacrificed on the altar of text messaging. Texting is quite a new phenomenon and has caused a high level of interest among investigators and writers all over the world. In this review there are studies that shows a positive and a negative effects of text messaging. Some argue that texting is just exploring the linguistic but in a shorter form such as acronyms. But others argue…show more content…
“When e-mail shorthand or for that matter, slang appears in academic assignments”, (NY Times, 2008) Professor Sterling said, “it is an opportunity for teachers to explain that while such usages are acceptable in some contexts, they do not belong in schoolwork.” (NY Times, 2008) “As the English language evolves, some e-mail conventions, like starting sentences without a capital letter, may well become accepted practice” (NY Times, 2008) he said. “I think in the future, capitalization will disappear,” (NY Times, 2008) said Professor Sterling, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. In reality, when his son asked what did the existence of the capital letter added after the period at the end of a sentence meant, he said, he had no answer (NY Times, 2008). So while there are professors that states that there is no negative effect of textese on literacy there are others who argues the…show more content…
In the case of Belize, only one interview has been done with students and teachers from St John’s College Junior College (7 News, 2012). The interview conducted was concentrated on texting habits and provided a convincing profile of a communication transformation. Both students and teachers of that institution were interviewed. Many teachers who were interviewed admitted that they have noticed an increase in wrong spelling in the students comprehension papers because they do a lot of texting. For instance, when they are writing “you”, instead they use the letter ‘u’, and for “are” they only write the letter ‘r’. Davina Cordova, one of the teachers interviewed, stated that text messaging definitely distracts the students and that they don’t get the concepts that are being thought at the moment and PSE examiners found that texting language was seeping into students essays (7 News, 2012). PSE examiner Yvonne Davis, Stated that instead of for students use the number ‘4’ (7 news,
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