/ 7 March 2005

Cellfone SMSing is cool

It’s gr8 news 4 skools! Claims that the explosion in SMS messaging among children is eroding youngsters’ literacy skills appear to be unfounded, according to research.

A study in the United Kingdom comparing the punctuation and spelling of 11- and 12-year-olds who use cellphone SMS messaging with another group of non-SMSers conducting the same written tests found no significant differences between the two.

Both groups made some grammatical and spelling errors, and ‘SMS-speak” abbreviations and symbols did not find their way into the written English of youngsters used to SMSing.

According to the author of the research, the speech and language therapist Veenal Raval, the findings reflect children’s ability to ‘code switch”, or move between modes of communication — a trend familiar to parents whose offspring slip effortlessly between playground slang and visit-the-grandparents politeness.

But the study did find that the pupils familiar with SMS messaging wrote significantly less when asked to describe a picture or an event than those who did not use cellphones, potentially fuelling concerns that the quality and expressiveness of children’s writing could be at risk even if their spelling is not.

The study, conducted at the the department of communication and science at City Uni-versity in London, comes amid growing concern over the potentially damaging effects of technologies on children’s ability to communicate effectively using conventional means.

According to the mobile telecoms consultancy Mobile Youth, 700 000 — or 20% — of primary school children own cellphones and the under-10s are the fastest-growing section of Britain’s cellphone market.

The leap in the popularity of cellphones and SMS messaging among children and teenagers over the past five years has prompted concern that pupils’ literacy skills could suffer. SMSing puts a premium on speed and concision, leading to the creation of a host of abbreviations and acronyms incomprehensible to the untrained reader, together with symbols or ’emoticons”, such as smiley faces, to express emotions.

Chief examiners’ reports on trends in public examinations have begun to note instances of SMS language in exam scripts. Some cases — including a 13-year-old Scottish pupil who wrote an entire description of her summer holidays in SMS-speak — have provoked concern among some teachers.

But despite widespread speculation, there is little research into the potential influence of SMSing on children’s writing.

According to Raval’s small-scale study, which focused on 20 youngsters, children have developed an ability to switch between two forms of language when SMSing or writing standard English.

Pupils were given a spelling test and conducted two writing exercises designed to replicate situations where they might normally SMS, such as describing something they had done the previous day. The tests too place in formal classroom conditions.

Said Raval: ‘The fear that has been put across in the media is that children don’t understand the need to code switch — that is, switch between standard English grammar for an exam or essay and what is acceptable when you are communicating on a social level. In fact, they are capable of that switch, just as bi- or tri-lingual children might speak English at school and a mother or father tongue at home.”

While the SMS-experienced children wrote much less than those who do not have cell-phones, concision was not necessarily a bad thing, he argued.

‘Whether that is a positive or negative effect is up for debate. It depends on the situation or the subject studied. A science exam might require brief answers, which might not be appropriate in a literature exam.”

A spokesperson for Britain’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which oversees public examinations, said he was interested in the research. He said he believes more investigation was needed on the effect of SMSing on written communication. It was important that children could communicate in a range of ways ‘depending on the communication channel they were using”, he said.

A British National Union of Teachers spokeswoman welcomed the research, saying abbreviation used in SMSing could even boost literacy skills by helping children to learn about how words divide into syllables.