Study Sez Txt Msgs Make Kidz Gr8 Spellrz

Picknz writes "The Telegraph reports that researchers have found texting can improve literacy among pupils by giving them extra exposure to word composition outside the school day. According to the report, the association between spelling and text messaging may be explained by the 'highly phonetic nature' of the abbreviations used by children and the alphabetic awareness required for successfully decoding the words. 'It is also possible that textism use adds value because of the indirect way in which mobile phone use may be increasing children's exposure to print outside of school,' says the report. 'We are now starting to see consistent evidence that children's use of text message abbreviations has a positive impact on their spelling skills,' adds Professor Claire Wood. 'There is no evidence that children's language play when using mobile phones is damaging literacy development.'"

Comments

Re:Writing

[clang_jangle]

Based on the number of mistakes with "then/than", "lose/loose", etc, I see from younger journalists and bloggers, I think spelling in general is getting worse, not better.

Way worse! Especially the last decade, many people don't even know that "then" and "than" are different words, that "ironic" doesn't mean "odd or coincidental", and how about expressions like "for all intensive purposes"? And don't get me started on "orientate"...

TFA is nonsense, written by an uneducated fool.

Re:English, itself, is broken

[Opportunist]

And again, at the danger of being redundant, I can't see why it ain't more popular with the French.

Maybe because it would have to be held at a university level, I dunno...

But on topic: There's a danger associated with changing the writing system. Germany had such a reform a few years ago. Now, you might know, German is written pretty close to its pronunciation. So we're not talking about a ground shaking, language uprooting change here. A few words were made simpler, a few ss - ß rules were revised to make them more logic and less arbitrary, the "Ph" in some foreign words were changed to F (so now you write "fotografieren" and "Fantasie" instead of "photgraphieren" und "Phantasie", thankfully they spared us "Füsik", it's still Physik. At least to my knowledge and it's gonna be a very cold day in hell before I write Füsik! Ok, I mean aside of this example ...).

So as you might see, minor changes. Even if you don't follow the change, you will still be able to read everything.

The outcry! Insane! Damaging our language! Dumbing down our language! Whole newspaper staff refused to follow the new language system and (some to this date) continue to write in the "old" system. Schools are in disarray, some German states followed the new system, some clinged to the old one, and of course kids now learn two different forms of writing which, while not mutually crippling, would lead to good students suddenly making a lot of grave spelling mistakes were they to move to another state and write their tests there.

Now imagine a much more invasive revision of the English language that you would have to coordinate not in a single country (ok, in the case of German it was three countries that were affected but afaik the Swiss said from the start that they don't give half a shit about it), but with four very important native speaking countries, quite a few former colonial countries where English is still a formal, official language and of course with pretty much every other country on this globe with English being the de facto lingua franca.

I don't think anyone really dares to touch that with a mile long pole.