NAME:

ARGUMENTATIVE EXPOSITORY WRITING FINAL

Topic: Texting

Premise: Texting is affecting Language Arts skills like Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading.

RUBRIC:

OMG! Is txting ruining #English ?!

Can Texting Ruin A Child’s Grammar And Spelling? The Impact Of Learning To Write On A Cell Phone

Jun 19, 2014 11:09 AM By Chris Weller

Handwritten letters are gone. Now love comes packaged in misspelled texts written by a clumsy pair of thumbs. Jhaymesisviphotography, CC BY 2.0

Is it any wonder the U.S. Postal Service just lost $1.9 billion in the second fiscal quarter? The age of handwritten letters, making their perishable crawl across the country to an awaiting lover’s mailbox, is over. In their place are heartfelt missives delivered instantly and electronically — a tender, “Luv u,” or the simple yet ethereal winky face. A pressing question emerges from this emotional wreckage: In migrating our lives to texting, does our grammar suffer to expediency?

Research has already shown that eliminating the complex typeface of script from lesson plans makes kids poorer readers . Now a growing body of research is investigating how text messages affect children’s ability to spell and use correct grammar. Most recently, a study from the University of Tasmania found that many of the common “violations” of standard written English, such as using “gonna” in place of “going to” or several exclamation points at a time, may not hurt these formal abilities all that much.

Indeed, this study breaks a long streak in academia to find texting has no impact on grammar and spelling. In 2012, researchers found the same link among American undergraduates between texting lingo, which they call “textism,” and measures of reading and spelling. Likewise, in 2008 and 2010 , separates studies both confirmed the perversions of English found in text messages flood into young people’s formal application of the language.

Nenagh Kemp, senior lecturer and co-author of the most recent study, however, believes her team’s findings uphold texting as a positive predictor of language skills, so long as students can keep the two linguistic worlds separate from one another. “As long as young writers can maintain this awareness," explained Kemp, “then the violations of grammar common in digital communication need not be perceived as a reduction in writing skill, but rather as the addition of an alternative, casual style to the writer’s repertoire.”

For their most recent study, Kemp and her colleagues recruited 243 participants from elementary school, high school, and college. They asked each subject to fork over every single text message he or she had sent over the last two days, which the researchers analyzed for spelling or grammatical violations. (They specifically avoid the word “mistakes” because not all deviations from proper English are accidental.) The three most common violations were: omissions of capitalizations and punctuation, omission of entire words, and unconventional punctuation. Each participant also took a formal spelling and grammar test.

A year later, the team brought the subjects back for a follow-up set of tests. The results were mixed, although Kemp seems to skirt around the undesirable results. “Although omitting capitals and punctuation was associated with poorer later spelling in primary school,” she wrote, elementary and high school students did show a positive effect on later spelling and grammar tests. Among college-aged students, the standout effect was a deficiency in capitalization and punctuation. Overall, later tests showed a negative link between texting and so-called “orthographic choice,” otherwise known as proper grammar.

What could explain these findings? First, there’s a known gap between adolescents’ later abilities and those of college students. Eighteen to 21-year-olds are generally exposed to more high-level sources of standard written English, in both reading and writing, than a litter of 11-year-olds would be.

This would imply college students are better equipped to go back and forth without making many mistakes where it counts. But that flexibility didn’t emerge, most likely because, as Kemp openly admits, “young adults are no longer so interested in using their linguistic skills to play with written language in the casual format of texting.” While kids violate the rules with excessive punctuation (“OMG!!!”), adults were more likely to violate the rules through the omission of punctuation, such as periods and apostrophes. So it’s not necessarily the case that adults make fewer mistakes because of texting. They just make different mistakes.

“Their message writing style seems to be shaped by the expectations that they and their friends have about how text messages ‘should’ look, the self-correction functions of their phones, and the desire to include emotional expression in their messages,” Kemp wrote.

Unfortunately, if this relationship is true, the natural imperfection of cell phone technology means many text messages will be riddled with errors. Likewise, standard written English will also contain these errors. But even if children and young adults alike have difficulty discerning between textism and formal English, Kemp’s advocacy for awareness makes the most sense. Poor grammar and spelling aren’t viruses; if anything, they’re minor scrapes. It’s just up to teachers and parents — the linguistic healers, if you will — to let kids know they’re injured.

Source: Wood C, Kemp N, Waldron S. Exploring the longitudinal relationships between the use of grammar in text messaging and performance on grammatical tasks. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 2014.

Authors

Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist

Sousan Arafeh, Principal, Research Images

Aaron Smith, Research Specialist

Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Project Manager

April 24, 2008

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

Summary of Findings

Teenagers’ lives are filled with writing. All teens write for school, and 93% of teens say they write for their own pleasure. Most notably, the vast majority of teens have eagerly embraced written communication with their peers as they share messages on their social network pages, in emails and instant messages online, and through fast-paced thumb choreography on their cell phones. Parents believe that their children write more as teens than they did at that age.

This raises a major question: What, if anything, connects the formal writing teens do and the informal e-communication they exchange on digital screens? A considerable number of educators and children’s advocates worry that James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was right when he recently suggested that young Americans’ electronic communication might be damaging “the basic unit of human thought – the sentence.”[footnoteRef:0] They are concerned that the quality of writing by young Americans is being degraded by their electronic communication, with its carefree spelling, lax punctuation and grammar, and its acronym shortcuts. Others wonder if this return to text-driven communication is instead inspiring a new appreciation for writing among teens. [0: Dillon, Sam. “In Test, Few Students are Proficient Writers,” The New York Times, April 3, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/education/03cndwriting.html?em&ex=1207454400&en=a866a90118b1f389&ei=5087%0A ]

While the debate about the relationship between e-communication and formal writing is on-going, few have systematically talked to teens to see what they have to say about the state of writing in their lives. Responding to this information gap, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and National Commission on Writing conducted a national telephone survey and focus groups to see what teens and their parents say about the role and impact of technological writing on both in-school and out-of-school writing. The report that follows looks at teens’ basic definition of writing, explores the various kinds of writing they do, seeks their assessment about what impact e-communication has on their writing, and probes for their guidance about how writing instruction might be improved.

At the core, the digital age presents a paradox. Most teenagers spend a considerable amount of their life composing texts, but they do not think that a lot of the material they create electronically is real writing. The act of exchanging emails, instant messages, texts, and social network posts is communication that carries the same weight to teens as phone calls and between-class hallway greetings.

At the same time that teens disassociate e-communication with “writing,” they also strongly believe that good writing is a critical skill for achieving success – and their parents agree. Moreover, teens are filled with insights and critiques of the current state of writing instruction as well as ideas about how to make in-school writing instruction better and more useful.

Even though teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world, they do not believe that communication over the internet or text messaging is writing.

The main reason teens use the internet and cell phones is to exploit their communication features.2 3 Yet despite the nearly ubiquitous use of these tools by teens, they see an important distinction between the “writing” they do for school and outside of school for personal reasons, and the “communication” they enjoy via instant messaging, phone text messaging, email and social networking sites.

· 85% of teens ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending an email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites.

· 60% of teens do not think of these electronic texts as “writing.”

Teens generally do not believe that technology negatively influences the quality of their writing, but they do acknowledge that the informal styles of writing that mark the use of these text-based technologies for many teens do occasionally filter into their school work. Overall, nearly two-thirds of teens (64%) say they incorporate some informal styles from their text-based communications into their writing at school.

· 50% of teens say they sometimes use informal writing styles instead of proper capitalization and punctuation in their school assignments;

· 38% say they have used text shortcuts in school work such as “LOL” (which stands for “laugh out loud”);

· 25% have used emoticons (symbols like smiley faces ☺) in school work.

2 Analysis of daily communications choices is based on all teens, regardless of technology ownership.

3 Lenhart, Amanda, Madden, Mary & Hitlin, Paul. (2005) “Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, DC, July 27, 2005

The impact of technology on writing is hardly a frivolous issue because most believe that good writing is important to teens’ future success.

Both teens and their parents say that good writing is an essential skill for later success in life.

· 83% of parents of teens feel there is a greater need to write well today than there was 20 years ago.

· 86% of teens believe good writing is important to success in life – some 56% describe it as essential and another 30% describe it as important.

Parents also believe that their children write more now than they did when they were teens.

· 48% of teenagers’ parents believe that their child is writing more than the parent did during their teen years; 31% say their child is writing less, and 20% believe it is about the same now as in the past.

Recognition of the importance of good writing is particularly high in black households and among families with lower levels of education.

· 94% of black parents say that good writing skills are more important now than in the past, compared with 82% of white parents and 79% of English-speaking Hispanic parents.

· 88% of parents with a high school degree or less say that writing is more important in today’s world, compared with 80% of parents with at least some college experience.

Teens are motivated to write by relevant topics, high expectations, an interested audience and opportunities to write creatively.

Teens write for a variety of reasons—as part of a school assignment, to get a good grade, to stay in touch with friends, to share their artistic creations with others or simply to put their thoughts to paper (whether virtual or otherwise). In our focus groups, teens said they are motivated to write when they can select topics that are relevant to their lives and interests, and report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the opportunity to write creatively. Having teachers or other adults who challenge them, present them with interesting curricula and give them detailed feedback also serves as a motivator for teens. Teens also report writing for an audience motivates them to write and write well.

Writing for school is a nearly every-day activity for teens, but most assignments are short.

Most teens write something nearly every day for school, but the average writing assignment is a paragraph to one page in length.

· 50% of teens say their school work requires writing every day; 35% say they write several times a week. The remaining 15% of teens write less often for school.

· 82% of teens report that their typical school writing assignment is a paragraph to one page in length.

· White teens are significantly more likely than English-speaking Hispanic teens (but not blacks) to create presentations for school (72% of whites and 58% of Hispanics do this).

The internet is also a primary source for research done at or for school. 94% of teens use the internet at least occasionally to do research for school, and nearly half (48%) report doing so once a week or more often.

Teens believe that the writing instruction they receive in school could be improved.

Most teens feel that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further. Our survey asked teens whether their writing skills would be improved by two potential changes to their school curricula: teachers having them spend more time writing in class, and teachers using more computer-based tools (such as games, writing help programs or websites, or multimedia) to teach writing.

Overall, 82% of teens feel that additional in-class writing time would improve their writing abilities and 78% feel the same way about their teachers using computer-based writing tools.

Non-school writing, while less common than school writing, is still widespread among teens.

Outside of a dedicated few, non-school writing is done less often than school writing and varies a bit by gender and race/ethnicity. Boys are the least likely to write for personal enjoyment outside of school. Girls and black teens are more likely to keep a journal than other teens. Black teens are also more likely to write music or lyrics on their own time.

· 47% of black teens write in a journal, compared with 31% of white teens.

· 37% of black teens write music or lyrics, while 23% of white teens do.

· 49% of girls keep a journal; 20% of boys do.

· 26% of boys say they never write for personal enjoyment outside of school.

Multi-channel teens and gadget owners do not write any more – or less – than their counterparts, but bloggers are more prolific.

Teens who communicate frequently with friends and teens who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones do not write more for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens. Teen bloggers, however, are prolific writers online and offline.

· 47% of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more compared to 33% of teens without blogs.

· 65% of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53% of non-bloggers say the same.

Teens more often write by hand for both out-of-school writing and school work.

Most teens mix and match longhand and computers based on tool availability, assignment requirements, and personal preference. When teens write they report that they most often write by hand, though they also often write using computers as well. Out-of-school personal writing is more likely than school writing to be done by hand, but longhand is the more common mode for both purposes.

· 72% of teens say they usually (but not exclusively) write the material they are composing for their personal enjoyment outside of school by hand; 65% say they usually write their school assignments by hand.

As tech-savvy as they are, teens do not believe that writing with computers makes a big difference in the quality of their writing.

Teens appreciate the ability to revise and edit easily on a computer but do not feel that the use of computers makes their writing better or improves the quality of their ideas.

· 15% of teens say their internet-based writing of materials such as emails and instant messages has helped improve their overall writing while 11% say it has harmed their writing. Some 73% of teens say this kind of writing makes no difference to their school writing.

· 17% of teens say their internet-based writing has helped the personal writing they do that is not for school, while 6% say it has made their personal writing worse. Some 77% believe this kind of writing makes no difference to their personal writing.

When it comes to using technology for school or non-school writing, teens believe that when they use computers to write they are more inclined to edit and revise their texts (57% say that).

Parents are generally more positive than their teen children about the effect of computers and text-based communication tools on their child’s writing.

Parents are somewhat more likely to believe that computers have a positive influence on their teen’s writing, while teens are more likely to believe computers have no discernible effect.

· 27% of parents think the internet writing their teen does make their teen child a better writer, and 27% think it makes the teen a poorer writer. Some 40% say it makes no difference.

On specific characteristics of the impact of tech-based writing, this is how parents’ and teens’ views match up:

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Teen/Parent Survey on Writing, September-November 2007. Margin of error is ±5%.

Teens enjoy non-school writing, and to a lesser extent, the writing they do for school.

Enjoyment of personal, non-school writing does not always translate into enjoyment of school-based writing. Fully 93% of those ages 12-17 say they have done some writing outside of school in the past year and more than a third of them write consistently and regularly. Half (49%) of all teens say they enjoy the writing they do outside of school “a great deal,” compared with just 17% who enjoy the writing they do for school with a similar intensity.

Teens who enjoy their school writing more are more likely to engage in creative writing at school compared to teens who report very little enjoyment of school writing (81% vs. 69%). In our focus groups, teens report being motivated to write by relevant, interesting, self-selected topics, and attention and feedback from engaged adults who challenged them.

www.nytimes.com

In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers

By SAM DILLION APRIL 3, 2008

About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.

The test, administered last year, showed that there were modest increases in the writing skills of low-performing students since the last time a similar exam was given, in 2002. But the skills of high-performing eighth and 12th graders remained flat or declined.

Girls far outperformed boys in the test, with 41 percent of eighth-grade girls scoring at or above the proficient level, compared with 20 percent of eighth-grade boys.

New Jersey and Connecticut were the two top-performing states, with more than half their students scoring at or above the proficient level (56 percent in New Jersey, 53 percent in Connecticut). Those two and seventeen other states ranked above New York, where 31 percent of students wrote at the proficient level.

Authorities in the federal government’s school testing program said they were encouraged by the results, especially since they seemed to counter other recent indicators suggesting a decline in Americans’ writing abilities.

Continue reading the main story

“I am happy to report, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that the death of writing has been greatly exaggerated,” said Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher who is a vice chairwoman of the board that oversees the federal testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress , known as the nation’s report card.

Still, some experts questioned whether the test, which asks students to write brief essays in a short time, gave an accurate measurement of their writing ability.

The results were released at a news conference Thursday at the Library of Congress in Washington.

James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, drew laughs when he expressed concern about what he called “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought, the sentence,” because young Americans are doing most of their writing in disjointed prose composed in Internet chat rooms or in cellphone text messages.

“The sentence is the biggest casualty,” Mr. Billington said. “To what extent is students’ writing getting clearer? Is that still being taught?”

Ms. Avallone sought to allay his concerns.

“I know that the sentence has not been put to rest as a unit of communication,” she said.

Ms. Avallone said the differences between girls’ and boys’ scores may result in part from lower literacy expectations for boys in public schools.

“These days I seldom, if ever, hear the message that math and science do not matter for girls, yet I do still encounter the myth that many boys won’t really need to write very much or very well once they leave school,” Ms. Avallone said.

The national writing test was given to 140,000 eighth graders and 28,000 12th grade students, selected to form a representative sample of all students nationwide in those grades. Each student wrote two 25-minute essays, designed to measure student skills at writing to inform, persuade and tell stories.

Overall, 33 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficiency level, which the test designers defined as competency in carrying out challenging academic tasks, while 88 percent scored at or above the basic level, defined as partial mastery of the skills needed for proficient work.

While 33 percent of eighth graders writing with proficiency may not sound like a lot, it is the best performance by eighth graders on any subject matter tested in the national assessment program in the last three years. Smaller percentages of eighth-grade students have performed at the proficiency level in reading, math, science, civics or history tests. Only 17 percent of eighth graders managed a proficient score on the nationwide history exam in 2006, for example.

“These results pleased and encouraged me,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s 60 largest urban districts. “A lot of cities have introduced explicit writing programs. You go into urban schools and you see hallways lined with samples of student writing. Writing programs have gotten better.”

There were large differences in scores from state to state. Mississippi ranked last, with only 15 percent of students writing at the proficiency level.

The encouraging overall results contrasted with some other recent indicators of Americans’ writing prowess. A survey of 120 corporations conducted by the College Board in 2003, for instance, concluded that one-third of employees at the nation’s blue-chip companies wrote poorly, and that businesses were spending billions of dollars on remedial training, some of it for new hires straight out of college.

“Overall, American students’ writing skills are deteriorating,” said Will Fitzhugh, the founder of Concord Review, a journal published in Massachusetts that features history research papers written by high school students. He expressed skepticism that the national assessment accurately measured students’ overall writing skills because, he said, it only tests their ability to write very brief essays jotted out in half an hour.

“The only way to assess the kind of writing that students will have to do in college is to have them write a term paper, and then have somebody sit down and grade it — and nobody wants to do that, because it’s too costly,” he said.

Mr. Fitzhugh cited findings of a 2006 survey of college professors, in which a large majority said they thought most high school graduates came to college with limited writing skills.

Could texting and autocorrect affect kids' writing skills?

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