Texting And Literacy

The effect of Literacy Due to Texting Nowadays, texting is the main source of communication, especially for college students. They tend to not have the time to have conversations with others on the phone because of all the studying and work they may be doing, so they will send a quick text to keep in contact with friends, family, or fellow classmates. The way the words are sent in these text messages are usually abbreviated to quicken the process of texting or spell check tends to fix every word for the texters, the person(s) that is texting, to correct the words for you, thus, this may affect the way the student’s academic success. Texting, also known as, short message system (SMS), is a way of communication that allows a person to send
There are many different ways, abbreviations, to say certain things while you are texting, and because of this it has made effect on how students perform in the classroom. Devoted texters usually delete vowels, substitute letters with symbols or numbers, and even on purposely misspell words, because they are just worried about getting their message across (Shafie, Norizul, and Nazira 26). A researcher named Thurlow (2003) claims that the SMS language is only able to understand by people that are used to receiving or sending messages, so it may sound like an ignorant language to people who do not text, if the texter does it to a high extent (Shafie, Norizul, and Nazira 27).
Having a grammatically correct text message is the least of these college student’s worries, and this is when the academic problems begin to occur with the student’s writing, especially first year students. Shafie, Norizul, and Nazira stated that, consonants are used more frequently, than vowels; for example, the word “thanks” is abbreviated to “THX” because in the English language consonants carry a higher meaning than vowels
According to Thurlow (2003), teenagers write their text messages informally which result in producing `small-talk ‘ and create the desired social bond (27). The language that is used in text messaging is not only comprehensible, but also appropriate to the overall communicative for these teenagers. “Thurlow (2003) concludes that new linguistic practices are often adaptive rather than necessarily subtractive; as young text-massagers manipulate conventional discursive practices with linguistic creativity and communicative competence in their pursuit of intimacy and social intercourse” (Shafie, Norizul, and Nazira