A new study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that around two-thirds of middle school and high school pupils in the United States are guilty of incorporating lazy instant messaging (IM) and phone text language into their written work.
Study reveals US school kids are increasingly using text language in written work. Credit: Kanzeon Zen Center/Flickr.
According to the survey results, around one in four respondents admitted to dropping emoticon symbols directly into their school work, which include the likes of drawn and text-based winks and smiley faces -- i.e. ;) and :).
Similarly half of those polled said they used informal punctuation and grammar, while forty percent said they have cut corners in terms of expression, with the likes of LOL, a text speak response meaning to laugh out loud, being one such application.
Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew Internet, said that the incorporation of such relaxed and casual written language into school work is nothing to be especially worried about and is merely a text-based form of slang for this particular generation.
Lenhart notes that conversational slang is something that always crops up from generation to generation; although, before today’s technological advances, it has usually evolved from spoken words.
Yet finding an educational balance between formal and informal writing in the classroom might be somewhat of a concern for teachers, not least when students admit to lapsing into the convenience of IM and text-based language.
“I’ll forget I’m writing a formal paper. I’ll replace ‘for’ with the number 4,” commented Leland High School senior Vivek Musinipally in a San Jose Mercury Times report. “It’ll just come out by itself without me thinking about it. But when I proofread, I laugh when I see it.”
The study, which was conducted across 700 teenage and parent participants, duly revealed that most parents believe proper written literacy is more important than ever in light of the ever-popular instant messaging phenomenon.
And that’s a view upheld by many teachers, who have been stumped by and subsequently banned lazy language used by pupils in their classrooms. For example, teachers hit significant speed bumps of understanding when faced with written text speech such as IMO (in my opinion), BTW (by the way), BC (because), and RU (are you).
Numeric short cuts such as 4 and 2 have also been banished, as have other forms of written slang such as “wanna” and “sucks.”
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